Posted . Growth is recovering but inequality remains persistent. Growth is projected to reach 1.5% in 2018 after many years below one percent or negative in per capita terms. Low growth and high unemployment have adversely affected the well-being of South Africans. Since 2010, inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient at 0.62, has almost stagnated withering the social contract in a context of policy mistrust. More...
Posted . After a long period of lacklustre economic performance, robust growth has resumed. The Finnish economy suffered a series of sizeable adverse shocks alongside the global financial and economic crisis, facing major difficulties in the electronic and forest industries, in addition to a severe recession in Russia. More...
Posted . Over the past two decades, strong growth combined with remarkable social progress has made Brazil one of the world’s leading economies. However, Brazil remains a highly unequal country, recent corruption allegations have revealed significant challenges in economic governance and the situation of its fiscal accounts is challenging with high and rising public debt (OECD, 2018). More...
Posted . In Finland, as elsewhere, income taxation and the withdrawal of benefits reduce the pay-off for individuals who go from benefits to work. Multiple benefits interact in complex ways, trapping individuals in unemployment, underemployment or inactivity. Complex benefit rules combine with administrative practices to create “bureaucratic traps” when individuals taking up temporary, part-time or unstable employment face a real or perceived risk of losing eligibility or receiving benefits with a delay as their claims are re-evaluated. More...
Posted . Chile has been one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD in recent decades. Sound macroeconomic management, bold structural reforms, such as trade and investment liberalisation, and buoyant natural-resource sectors, supported fast convergence in living standards. More...
Posted . Households’ economic well-being is usually measured by income. But what if there is an interruption in the flow of income? Or an unexpected expense? Such events highlight the importance of wealth accumulation to sustain people’s economic well-being. More...
Posted . In many advanced countries, the share of citiziens having reached post-retirement age is growing fast. Since elderly rely for a good part on a public pension scheme for income support, population ageing tends to result in more income redistribution, in particular in the form cash transfers. More...
Posted . Tax and transfer systems are fundamental pillars of an inclusive growth policy agenda that aims at sharing the benefits of growth more equally and securing decent living standards for those in most need. A new OECD report by Causa and Hermansen (2017) (“Income redistribution through taxes and transfers across OECD countries”) documents that redistribution through taxes and transfers has tended to decline across OECD countries since the mid-1990s. More...
The notion of well-being and happiness has increasingly taken centre stage in our societies over the recent years. As Nobel Prize Economist Daniel Kahneman puts it, "there is a huge wave of interest in happiness among researchers. There is a lot of happiness coaching. Everybody would like to make people happier."
In addition to physical health, it has become clear that emotional health is vital for our overall well-being. More...
Innovation and problem solving depend increasingly on the ability to synthesise disparate elements to create something different and unexpected. This involves curiosity, open-mindedness and making connections between ideas that previously seemed unrelated. It also requires knowledge across a broad range of fields. If we spend our entire lives in the silo of a single discipline, we will not gain the imaginative skills necessary to connect the dots and develop the next life-changing invention. More...
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