Documents expenditure 33 results

"This is the fifth report with long-term projections of the budgetary impact of population ageing. It covers the 28 EU Member States and Norway over the period 2013–2060

Over the coming decades, as Europeans live longer and have fewer children, Europe's population will turn increasingly ‘grey'. Demographic trends also mean that the proportion of workers supporting those in retirement will halve from an average of four today, to just two, by 2060. The 2015 Ageing Report sheds light on the economic, budgetary and societal challenges that policy makers will have to face in the future as a result of these trends. The report's long-term projections provide an indication of the timing and scale of challenges that can be expected so as to inform European policy makers about the scale and timing of the challenges they must face."

"In 2012, the ECOFIN Council asked the Economic Policy Committee (EPC) to update its age-related expenditure projections by the autumn of 2014, to take into account new population projections by Eurostat.

The long-term, age-related expenditure projections provide an indication of the timing and scale of the potential economic effects to be expected as Europe's populations age. The projections show where (in which countries), when, and to what extent ageing pressures will accelerate as the baby-boom generation retires and average life spans in the EU increase. Hence, the updated projections of age-related expenditure and the associated sustainability assessments will provide insight on both the economic impact of ageing and the risks to the long-term sustainability of Member States' public finances.

This report, the first of two, describes the underlying macroeconomic assumptions and projection methodologies for all Member States.

A second report, to be presented to the ECOFIN Council in May 2015, will draw on this analysis to calculate the age-related expenditures associated with pensions, health care, long-term care, education and unemployment transfers."

"There are large gaps in associational involvement along education, income and gender lines and across different organizations. This paper examines the extent to which these gaps vary across countries. We argue that, next to the discussion about crowding out effects that is often found in the literature, it is important to look at conditioning effects of welfare states. Through welfare state policies, resources are redistributed in society. In turn, these resources enable participation in voluntary associations and organizations. Our analyses — based on multi-level models and data of the European Social Survey — indicate that extensive welfare state expenditures reduce participatory inequalities, with some variation according to the kind of organization under study. Our findings suggest that conditioning effects of welfare states deserve greater attention in research and that participatory inequalities may be reduced by social policy."