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This report, part of a series covering around 20 OECD countries, contains a survey of Spain's main barriers to employment for older workers, an assessment of the adequacy and effectiveness of existing measures to overcome these barriers, and a set of policy recommendations to further action by public authorities and social partners. These recommendations are designed to alleviate some of the pension and health care pressures governments are facing because of ageing populations.
With rapidly aging populations, old-age pension reform and early-retirement schemes alone may not suffice to provide adequate employment opportunities. Additional measures will clearly be needed on wage scales, job discrimination, skills acquisition, and working conditions. Attitudes will also have to change about working later in life. Little is known, however, about what countries have been or should be doing on those issues. This report on Sweden begins a series of around 20 OECD country reports intended to fill the gap. Each contains a survey of the main employment barriers confronting older people, an assessment of existing remedial measures, and policy recommendations for further action.
This report, part of a series covering around 20 OECD countries, contains a survey of the UK's main barriers to employment for older workers, an assessment of the adequacy and effectiveness of existing measures to overcome these barriers, and a set of policy recommendations to further action by public authorities and social partners. These recommendations are designed to alleviate some of the pension and health care pressures governments are facing because of ageing populations.
In the face of rapid population ageing and the trend towards early retirement, there is a need to promote better employment opportunities for older people. This report on the United States, part of a series of around 20 OECD country reports, examines the demographic and economic challenges facing social security as well as the scope for raising labour force participation of older workers. It also looks at barriers to retention and hiring of older workers and measures to improve employability including education and training. This report includes a series of recommendations and is based on the proceedings of a seminar. It is published in English only.
"An excellent report putting retirement in an international perspective."
-John Rother, AARP
People today are living longer than ever before, while birth rates are dropping in the majority of OECD countries. In such demographics, public social expenditures require to be adequate and sustainable in the long term. Older workers play a crucial role in the labour market. Now that legal retirement ages are rising, older workers will work longer and employers will have to retain them. But those older workers who have lost their job have experienced long term-unemployment and low probabilities to return to work. What can countries do to help? How can they give older people better work incentives and opportunities? How can they promote age diversity in firms? This report offers analysis and assessment on what the best policies are for fostering employability, job mobility and labour demand at an older age in France.
Given the ageing challenges, there is an increasing pressure in OECD countries to further boost the employability of the working-age population over the coming decades. This report provides an overview of policy iniatives implemented over the past decade in the Netherlands and identifies areas where more should be done, covering both supply-side and demand-side aspects. To give better incentives to carry on working, the report recommends to promote longer contribution periods in the second-pillar pension schemes, and ensure better information and transparency of pension schemes, with a special focus on groups with low financial literacy. On the side of employers, it is important to progress towards more age-neutral hiring decisions and wage-setting procedures with more focus on performance and less on tenure and seniority. To improve the employability of older workers, the focus should be to promote training measures for older unemployed which are directly linked to a specific job. The large diversity in municipal "Work-First"programmes should be utilised in designing mor effective activation policies targetted on those at risk of losing contact with the labour market.
This report provides an overview of the substantial ageing and employment policy initiatives already implemented in Norway over the past decade and identifies areas where more should be done, covering both supply-side and demand-side aspects.
To give better incentives to carry on working, the report recommends further reforms in the second-pillar pension schemes, particularly for public sector employees. On the side of employers, it is important to progress towards more age-neutral hiring decisions and to review of age limits for mandatory retirement.
To improve the employability of older workers, the focus should be to promote job-related training with a particular focus on mid-career workers and to encourage initiatives based on a full-time culture and good working conditions for all.
This landmark study of the material well-being of older people in nine OECD countries -- Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States -- uses a wealth of new data to shed light on the challenges that face policy-makers as they anticipate the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation. The findings are often surprising.
In all the countries surveyed, policies have been fundamentally successful: older people at all income levels tend to maintain or even increase their material standards of living once they stop working. This happens despite large differences in approaches to public policy, including the size of public pensions. The systems that provide resources to older people are considerably more complex than is usually taken into account in policy-making, and the effects of policy, while large, are less direct than often thought.
Demography and changing labour market patterns make reforms to these systems imperative. The challenge is to make needed changes without undermining past success. This is difficult, but entirely possible; the payoffs from relatively small changes in the balance between work and retirement could be particularly large.
The study examines the many diverse ways in which the nine countries are tackling this challenge and the lessons that have been learned from their experiences. It provides invaluable evidence for policy-makers, researchers and citizens concerned about the challenges posed for societies by ageing populations.
Do older road users pose a safety risk to others? Is mandatory testing effective in determining the driving competence of older drivers? Are OECD Member countries prepared to meet the safety and mobility needs of the baby boom generation in the 21st century?
This report on the mobility needs and safety problems of ageing populations dispels many of the myths and misperceptions commonly held regarding elderly road users, and offers policy and research recommendations to provide for their safe, lifelong mobility.
Government workforces are ageing even more rapidly than the rest of society. This raises specific challenges and opportunities. An ageing public service increases fiscal burdens while decreasing immediate capacities to deliver services. In the long run, however, it also offers a strategic opportunity to downsize the public sector workforce if necessary and to change employment conditions and the management of government employees where this is deemed reasonable. This book reviews the experience of 9 OECD member countries in this field. It presents some conclusions on strategies that countries could implement in order to adjust their human resource policies to the wider ageing challenge.
OECD countries are undergoing an unprecedented increase in the proportion of elderly people among their total populations. To address these issues, the OECD organised a conference in Oslo in May 2002. This report highlights how ageing will affect urban design and development in terms of housing, land use, transportation and the urban environment and points to the growing role of new technologies in member countries. The book, featuring statistical data, is for sociologists, policy researchers, journalists, librarians and economists.
Aggressive tax planning (ATP) schemes based on after-tax hedging pose a threat to countries’ revenue base: empirical evidence suggests that hundreds of millions of USD are at stake, with a number of multi-billion USD transactions identified by certain countries. After having described in general terms the notion of hedging as a risk management tool and the effect of taxation on hedging transactions, this report illustrates the features of ATP schemes based on after-tax hedging, summarises the detection and response strategies that have been used by countries, highlights the compliance and policy issues arising from these schemes, and ends with a number of conclusions and recommendations.
This Agreement contains two models for bilateral agreements drawn up in the light of the commitments undertaken by the OECD and the committed jurisdictions. The Working Group was chaired by Malta and the Netherlands and marks the first results of the OECD's collaboration with the jurisdictions that have committed to improve transparency and establish effective exchange of information in tax matters.
- What has been achieved in rural finance and institutional reform during more than a decade of transition and what challenges remain? - What are the special needs of South Eastern European countries to attract agricultural credit and finance to their troubled agro-food sectors? - What should be the role of governments to facilitate the development of sustainable rural finance and credit systems? - How should the banking sector innovate to respond to significant transformations in farm ownership and production structure? - What are the advantages and perspectives of rural credit co-operatives? - What is the role of trade and manufacturer credit? - Can micro-finance be successful in helping to reduce rural credit constraints and stimulate rural development? These are some of the issues addressed in the proceedings of the OECD expert meeting: "Agricultural Finance and Credit Infrastructure in Transition Economies", held in Portoroz, Slovenia on 29-30 May 2001. Over 90 participants, including policy makers, government officials, bankers, agro-business, independent experts, and academics from 22 countries and international organisations focused on the special issues in this sector for South Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine. This book is part of the OECD's ongoing co-operation with non-Member economies around the world.
How to develop an effective and sustainable agricultural and rural finance system in a climate of accumulated debts, insolvency of the majority of agricultural enterprises, low profitability of agricultural production, and an unstable macro-economic situation - How to create a banking system that services agriculture and is adapted to diverse farm structures - How to introduce alternative financial and credit institutions and mechanisms - How to establish contractual arrangements between primary agriculture and the up- and downstream sectors - What should be the role of governments in establishing such systems?
These are some of the issues addressed in the proceedings of the OECD expert meeting: "Agricultural Finance and Credit Infrastructure in Transition Economies", held in Moscow in February 1999. The meeting brought together over 200 policy-makers, government officials, independent
This report reviews recent trends in agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and discusses the impact of a wide range of policies on the creation and diffusion of innovation in the agricultural and agrifood sector. It suggests a framework for analysing the role of governments in fostering increased innovation, with a view to helping to identify practical actions that governments could take to improve productivity growth, sustainable use of resources, and resilience to future market developments in national and global agriculture and agri-food systems.
This book synthesizes the findings of a longer work which sets out a strategy for raising rural incomes. It emphasises the creation of diversified rural economies with opportunities within and outside agriculture. Agricultural policies need to be integrated within an overall mix of policies and institutional reforms that facilitate, rather than impede, structural change. By investing in public goods, such as infrastructure and agricultural research, and by building effective social safety nets, governments can limit the role of less efficient policies such as price controls and input subsidies.
With more than two-thirds of the world’s poor living in rural areas, higher rural incomes are a pre-requisite for sustained poverty reduction and reduced hunger. This volume sets out a strategy for raising rural incomes which emphasises the creation of diversified rural economies with opportunities within and outside agriculture. Agricultural policies need to be integrated within an overall mix of policies and institutional reforms that facilitate, rather than impede, structural change. By investing in public goods, such as infrastructure and agricultural research, and by building effective social safety nets, governments can limit the role of less efficient policies such as price controls and input subsidies.
This book presents the proceedings of an OECD conference reflecting on how China can best manage its reform process under WTO integration. It is an invaluable analysis of farm and rural realities in today’s China and their ultimate implications for world trade.
China’s World Trade Organisation membership has brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges, propelling its agricultural development into a new era. China’s policymakers continue to face the twin challenges of raising farm incomes and restructuring the rural economy. Do economy-wide policies in China support the agricultural sector? What is the true extent of the "peasant burden"? What policies will most effectively promote the development of rural areas? What is the role of education in improving rural livelihoods and redeploying rural labour? What is the degree of market integration and how well are prices transmitted throughout the country?
These questions and issues were debated based on the papers reproduced in this publication. They offer the reader the fruits of timely analytical and strategic thinking by some of the world’s renowned experts on China’s agricultural policies and on methods of policy analysis.
Estimates of support to agriculture in six economies (India is not yet covered) from 1995 to 2007 are provided, in conformance with recent changes to the OECD measurement methodology. This allows a consistent comparison across emerging economies and with OECD countries in terms of changes in the level and composition of support to producers and the sector as a whole.