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COVID-19 and Well-being: Life in the Pandemic explores the immediate implications of the pandemic for people’s lives and livelihoods in OECD countries. The report charts the course of well-being – from jobs and incomes through to social connections, health, work-life balance, safety and more – using data collected during the first 12-15 months of the pandemic. It also takes stock of what has happened to human, economic, social and natural capital that, beyond their effects on people’s lives today, shape living conditions for years to come. It shows how COVID-19 has had far-reaching consequences for how we live, work and connect with one another, and how experiences of the pandemic varied widely, depending on whether and where people work, their gender, age, race and ethnicity, education and income levels. The report also examines the role that well-being evidence can play in supporting governments’ pandemic recovery efforts. It argues that a well-being lens can prompt policy-makers to refocus on the outcomes that matter the most to people, to redesign policy content from a more multidimensional perspective, to realign policy practice across government silos, and to reconnect people with the public institutions that serve them.

Across the OECD, nearly 19 million people are living with dementia. Millions of family members and friends provide care and support to loved ones with dementia throughout their lives. Globally, dementia costs over USD 1 trillion per year and represents one of the leading causes of disability for elderly adults. These numbers will continue to rise as populations age. Until a cure or disease-modifying treatment for dementia is developed, the progress of the disease cannot be stopped. This report presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive cross-country assessment of the state of dementia care in OECD countries. In recent years, OECD countries have enhanced their efforts to provide high-quality dementia care during diagnosis, early and advanced dementia, but improving measurement is necessary for enhancements in care quality and outcomes for people with dementia. The report advises a set of policies that can help countries to improve diagnosis, strengthen access to care services, improve the quality of care, and support the families and carers of people living with dementia. Measuring and comparing the services that are delivered to people with dementia and the outcomes they achieve is a crucial part of improving dementia care. Most health systems have very poor data on dementia care and  countries should work to strengthen the measurement of quality and outcomes of dementia care.

Over the past four years, the OECD has conducted a series of in-depth reviews of the policies and institutions that underpin the measurement and improvement of health care quality in 15 different health systems. This synthesis report draws on key lessons from the OECD Health Care Quality Review series. The objective is to summarise the main challenges and good practices to support improvements in health care quality, and to help ensure that the substantial resources devoted to health are being used effectively in supporting people to live healthier lives. The overarching conclusion emerging across the Health Care Quality Review series concerns transparency. Governments should encourage, and where appropriate require, health systems and health care providers to be open about the effectiveness, safety and patient-centredness of care they provide. More measures of patient outcomes are needed (especially those reported by patients themselves), and these should underpin standards, guidelines, incentives and innovations in service delivery. Greater transparency can lead to optimisation of both quality and efficiency – twin objectives which reinforce, rather than subvert, each other. In practical terms, greater transparency and better performance can be supported by changes in where and how care is delivered; changes in the roles of patients and professionals; and employing tools such as data and incentives more effectively. Key actions in these three areas are set out in the twelve lessons presented in this synthesis report.

The book presents a background study of DRG-based payment systems, drawing on the experience of implementing such hospital funding arrangements internationally, including an overview of developments in the Asia and Pacific region. It underscores the need for countries to be clear about their purpose and objective for introducing Diagnosis Related Groups, as well as their place in health-care financing reform, and for policy-makers to reflect on the importance of country-specific starting points, objectives and context in which the hospital payment reforms are being implemented. Chapter 4 – written by Yuki Murakami and Luca Lorenzoni – investigates the evidence regarding the impact on cost, quality and efficiency of the introduction of a DRG-based payment system.
 

Previous OECD and EU work has shown that even native-born children with immigrant parents face persistent disadvantage in the education system, the school-to-work transition and the labour market. To which degree are these linked with their immigration background, i.e. with the issues faced by their parents? Complementing the report Catching Up? Intergenerational Mobility and Children of Immigrants (OECD 2017), this publication presents seven in-depth country case studies. The countries and regions covered in this publication are Austria, the European Union, France, Germany, the Netherlands, North America and Sweden.

Previous OECD and EU work has shown that even native-born children with immigrant parents face persistent disadvantage in the education system, the school-to-work transition, and the labour market. To which degree are these linked with their immigration background, i.e. with the issues faced by their parents? This publication includes cross-country comparative work and provides new insights on the complex issue of the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage for native-born children of immigrants.

At a moment when many countries of the MENA region are looking to accelerate economic growth and build more stable, open societies, this report argues that greater women’s economic empowerment holds one of the keys. It asserts that despite challenges some countries are facing in guaranteeing women equal access to economic opportunity, progress is underway and can be further nurtured through targeted, inclusive and coordinated policy actions. Building on the conclusions of a first monitoring report released in 2017, the report analyses recent legislative, policy and institutional reforms in support of women’s economic empowerment in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia and seeks to identify success factors that have helped anchor reform. Moreover, it delivers actionable examples and practical tools for policy makers to help them transform policies into effective actions for women’s economic empowerment.

OECD has conducted policy reviews of migrant education in Austria, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden and has examined the migrant education experience in many countries. This book offers comparative data on access, participation and performance of immigrant students and their native peers and identifies a set of policy options based on solid evidence of what works.

Some 15 to 30 per cent of our children and youth are at risk of failing in school where learning and behaviour problems touch ever younger children. In many countries with very different political and cultural backgrounds, these challenges are being met by increasing the co-ordination of education, health and social services, a process often galvanised by a broader involvement, extending to business and senior citizens. This is more than merely tinkering with statutory systems of service provision. Current services are mismatched; our vision of the family and its needs is changing along with the balance between prevention and remediation, and the ways that professionals work together. This book provides the detailed stories of how this process has developed in seven OECD countries: Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States. It looks at system change from the points of view of policy-makers, managers, practitioners and service users. It provides information on the background to the changes, highlighting what was provided to help the changes happen and investigating the process of change and the outcomes of the reforms. The scope of the work is broad: it covers pre-school, school age and transition to work.

In developing countries, 6 out of 10 people die from infectious diseases. Nearly 1 billion humans suffer from a neglected infectious disease, according to the World Health Organisation. Yet less than 1% of the new drugs placed on the market from 1975 to the turn of the century were developed for these diseases. This book looks at ways of improving the availability of medicines for infectious diseases through strengthened coherence in health, trade, science and technology, development co-operation and finance.

Despite progressive ratification of international conventions on that issue, 23% of the world’s children aged 10-14 are at work. This important book seeks to answer fundamental questions about the phenomenon’s economic causes, the working conditions children endure, and implications of their labour for the economic outlook of the countries concerned. It moreover examines the effectiveness of various policies implemented to combat child labour and the beneficial effects such policies can have on economic development.

The fight against the illegal entry, residence and employment of foreigners is one of the key priorities of the immigration policies of the OECD countries. This irregular migration continues to persist, albeit at different levels for different receiving countries, both in countries that have expressed a political will to manage migration flows more effectively and to fight against the trafficking of labour, and in those that continue to receive a large number of immigrants every year as part of an active policy to recruit permanent migrant workers. In the light of the growing role of trafficking networks and their increasingly active involvement in moving labour across international boundaries, enhanced co-operation at both national and international levels is required to develop policies for preventing and combating the employment of foreigners in an irregular situation. In particular, whatever is done to combat the hiring of illegal immigrants must address the problem of undeclared work in general, and not just the employment of illegal immigrants per se. Better information on the risks and penalties involved in the use of illegal labour should also be directed at both employers and workers in industries where these illegal practices are prevalent, but also at employers that resort to the use of undeclared labour only on an occasional basis and at sending countries. Various specific measures adopted by a number of Member countries, such as the requirement to notify relevant government agencies prior to hiring, fiscal incentives for the employment of legal workers or the streamlining of hiring formalities, might be applied in a larger number of countries. The forging of partnerships between the relevant government agencies and employers’ and employees’ associations in each country should also be encouraged, together with the extension of international co-operation to control and manage immigration flows more effectively.