Documents Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris 1 385 results

"Climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution – the elements of the triple planetary crisis – are inextricably connected. Yet, policies to address them have generally not taken account of their interlinkages.

This OECD Environmental Outlook examines in detail the interlocking trends and drivers of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, projects how they will evolve through mid-century, and examines policy synergies and trade-offs. It also provides a roadmap to help governments tackle these challenges in a more integrated manner. "

"The global economy has proved more resilient than expected this year, supported by improved financial conditions, rising AI-related investment and trade, and macroeconomic policies. However, underlying fragilities are increasing. Labour markets are showing first signs of weakening despite the OECD unemployment rate steady at 4.9%, with job vacancies falling below their 2019 average in many countries and confidence softening. Risks around the outlook remain significant, including the prospect of further trade barriers, a potential sharp repricing of risk in financial markets, potentially amplified by stresses in leveraged non-bank financial institutions and volatile crypto-asset markets. Lingering fiscal concerns could lead to further increases in long-term bond yields, which may tighten financial conditions and elevate debt-service burdens, potentially weighing on economic growth."

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"This paper updates previous OECD work on the strictness of activation requirements for benefit recipients, a topic central to the mutual obligations framework that underpins modern social safety nets. It covers multiple tiers of income support for jobseekers, including unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance, and minimum income benefits where relevant. By incorporating new data for 2024, it presents detailed information on job-search reporting procedures, monitoring mechanisms, definitions of suitable work, and sanction rules across OECD and EU countries. The paper also updates the OECD indicator of strictness of activation requirements. This composite indicator summarises complex national rules into a single, standardised measure that enables consistent monitoring and benchmarking across countries. Together with related OECD databases on benefit levels, work incentives for benefit recipients, and spending on active labour market policies, the updated database and strictness indicator support in-depth, evidence-based assessments of recent changes in income support and activation policies."

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"This policy brief provides new insights into how people experience the role of digital technologies in their lives, based on original cross-country data from the poll in the OECD Digital Well-being Hub, developed in collaboration with Cisco. The findings reveal wide variations in digital engagement and well-being outcomes across different groups of society. Younger adults report the highest engagement with generative AI, remote work, and recreational screen time. Women are relatively more engaged in social networking than men; and while most overall perceive digital tools as strengthening their relationships, this view is more common among youth and women. High screen time remains a concern, with 38% of users, especially young adults, exceeding five hours daily. AI-related training is primarily taken up by younger, highly educated individuals, reflecting increasing awareness of AI's impact on career prospects. Within the OECD Well-being Framework, these findings offer a timely lens on the complex interplay between digitalisation, demographic patterns, and people's well-being."

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"As digital technologies become central to everyday life, screen time is increasingly shaping how people experience well-being. This brief explores these dynamics using recent cross-country poll data for 14 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States), collected in early 2025 in collaboration with Cisco as part of the OECD Digital Well-being Hub. Using binary logistic regression models, it finds that individuals spending more than two hours daily on screens for personal use are more likely to report poorer subjective well-being . Yet, screen time alone does not tell the whole story. Lifestyle conditions like sleep deprivation, low physical activity and financial hardship prove to be even stronger predictors of low subjective well-being. Vulnerabilities deepen when prolonged screen use is coupled with factors like loneliness or unemployment. These findings underscore the importance of a balanced use of digital technologies for healthier lives."

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"Population ageing is transforming economies and societies across many OECD countries, including those in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. At the same time, persistent inequalities in paid and unpaid work continue to limit women's full participation in the labour market, undermining growth, productivity, and countries' capacity to respond to demographic change. This policy paper examines how low fertility, longer life expectancy, and rising care needs intersect with gaps in employment, earnings, and caregiving. Drawing on international evidence and country experiences, the paper highlights how gender-blind demographic strategies can inadvertently reinforce inequalities, reduce policy effectiveness, and miss opportunities to strengthen care systems, labour supply, and healthy ageing. It identifies how governments can design more effective demographic responses by integrating equality considerations into labour market, care, health, and social protection reforms. It also outlines the institutional capacities needed to support whole-of-government action, from budgeting to data systems and impact assessments."

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"Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to be an important driver of productivity growth over the next decade, even if with significant cross-country heterogeneity. This paper examines the potential of AI to foster productivity growth in Low-Income Countries (LICs) and Lower-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).

LICs and LMICs risk benefiting less from AI due to low incidence of knowledge-intensive services, where gains from AI mostly occur. Additionally, barriers to AI adoption include inadequate digital infrastructure, low levels of education and skills in the workforce, limited access to financing for high AI adoption costs, and underdeveloped regulatory frameworks. At the same time, LICs and LMICs may benefit from factors such as a young workforce and international spillovers through knowledge transfers. Overall, structural weaknesses in LICs and LMICs risk outweighing these potential advantages. This underscores the need for policies that enhance capabilities for AI adoption in LICs and LMICs and help seizing long-run opportunities from the global AI economy.

In the same series"

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"AI can be used to improve access to social security benefits and ensure the right benefits get to the right people at the right time. To explore how AI can be used to this end, this report documents concrete policy levers, tools, implementation strategies, and capacity-building efforts in national public services, with particular attention to issues of data quality, governance, and workforce readiness. It provides guidance on how the social security sector can benefit from and align with national efforts for more cohesive, impactful and trustworthy uses of AI. Further efforts will be needed to explore the effective use of AI in the social security sector, particularly in adapting these practices to the specific operational, legal, and ethical contexts of social protection systems. Continued experimentation, evaluation, and cross-sector collaboration will be essential to ensure that AI adoption delivers tangible benefits while safeguarding equity, transparency, and public trust.

The report underscores a critical opportunity to harness AI as a strategic enabler of more inclusive, effective, and transparent social security systems. Realising this potential will depend on embedding robust governance frameworks, investing in data and infrastructure, and building the institutional and human capabilities necessary for trustworthy AI in the public sector."

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"Trade union density and collective bargaining coverage have continued to decline across most OECD countries since the 1980s, while employer organisation membership has remained comparatively stable. Drawing on the September 2025 update of the OECD/AIAS ICTWSS database, this policy brief reviews the main trends and cross-country differences, and examines how collective bargaining systems are evolving. It also discusses the methodological and data challenges that remain in accurately measuring union membership, employer organisation membership, and collective bargaining coverage across OECD countries."

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"Certain growth-promoting policies can have negative side-effects by increasing the vulnerability of economies to financial crises. Typical examples are greater openness to financial flows or more liberalised financial markets. This paper investigates whether the growth benefits of policy reforms in these growth-enhancing areas, and others such as trade openness, exceed the possible costs of occasional, albeit potentially severe, crises for a sample of 100 developed and emerging economies from 1970 to 2010. The results suggest that the pro-growth effects of greater capital account openness outweigh the negative effects of a higher propensity to twin crises. Greater domestic financial liberalisation is associated with faster growth, but also with a higher propensity to systemic banking and twin crises. A free floating exchange rate and greater openness to trade, by reducing the likelihood of currency crises, are associated with higher growth. While pro-competitive product market regulations and lower corporate taxes are associated with higher growth, they do not seem to influence financial fragility via higher probability of crises."