Documents Brandt, Nicola 7 results

"To continue catching up with living standards in other OECD countries Poland needs to invest in higher skills. Crucial elements include: i) making sure that all children have access to high-quality early childhood education; ii) strengthening the basic skills of vocational education students and the relevance of their studies through stronger links with firms; and iii) improving the quality of universities by linking university teachers' pay and career progress with their teaching and research performance. The Polish government has taken action in many of these areas. More needs to be done to put immigrants' skills to better use. Polish return migrants frequently complain about difficulties in using their skills acquired abroad, while many immigrants of foreign origin work in professions that do not match their qualifications. Ongoing reforms to improve recognition of foreign credentials and new possibilities to validate work experience through formal qualifications will be helpful."

"France devotes a great deal of resources to vocational training for youths and especially adults, but the system is unduly complex and yields rather poor returns. The basic literacy and numeracy skills of many French adults remain weak in international comparison, with harmful effects on employment opportunities, wages and well-being. Access to basic skills training is poor for those who need it most, many of whom come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Secondary vocational education and apprenticeship training still suffer from a serious image problem in the minds of French families, even though the latter have a good track record. The government has succeeded in ensuring that the number of apprenticeships is growing, but that is mostly due to those studying at the tertiary level or at least for a higher secondary diploma. The labour market outcomes of those with only shorter vocational qualifications are not good, and quality in that stream needs to improve. To do so better teachers and workplace trainers need to be attracted to the field, especially individuals who can better link practical experience and theoretical concepts. The financing of the adult training system involves complex collection mechanisms even following a major recent overhaul. Making further changes will have to confront entrenched interests, even if the use of the training levy to finance business groups and unions has now ended. The goal is to direct more training funds to workers in small firms who have the weakest skills as well as to jobseekers, but this might be more easily achieved by shifting the funding base from a levy on employers to fiscal incentives or direct subsidies. There remains a need to align responsibilities for adult training with corresponding control over funds. Workers are henceforth to be given personal training accounts in which they can accumulate rights to up to 150 hours of training. But the enormous number of providers and courses on offer calls for greater efforts to develop good guidance, evaluation and certification systems to ensure the training finally chosen is appropriate and of sufficiently high quality."

"Thanks to a highly developed welfare state, poverty is moderate on average in France, but – as in other countries – highly concentrated in some neighbourhoods. Their residents face many social disadvantages, including high unemployment and inactivity, schools with many struggling children, often run-down housing and urban infrastructure, and a lack of local enterprises, services and amenities. The government focuses a wide array of policies on these areas to promote better schooling outcomes, employment and local economic activity. Urban renewal and public housing policies aim explicitly at promoting social mixing, often presented as an anti-ghetto policy. Evidence suggests that targeted investment in transport and housing infrastructure as well as education and training could go a long way to improving economic opportunities and well-being in poor areas. In contrast, special economic zones with tax breaks to attract business to these areas have a mixed track record at best. Greater social mixing is difficult to engineer, and it is far from clear if this by itself would improve the lives of the poor. There is a need to better link urban, social and judicial policies favouring alternative sentencing and support for offenders to integrate into society to avoid vicious circles of social disadvantage and crime."

"Poland's catch up with other OECD country has been largely based on productivity growth resulting from restructuring towards more productive sectors and foreign technology absorption. The economy's own innovation capacity is relatively weak, with low investment in research and development, no tradition of commercialising research and very limited innovation activity within firms. The government plans a higher education reform to strengthen the quality of research output, science-industry cooperation and international collaboration, which are all weak. Considerable EU funding is available to support innovation. Most of it is conditioned on science-industry co-operation, which is showing initial benefits. A lively start-up scene is gradually emerging, and the government foresees considerable public support for venture capital financing. Yet, investment in higher education and research trails behind economies that have been able to build strong science and high-tech start-up activity. Poland's many small and medium-sized enterprises have particularly low productivity, partly related to weaknesses in vocational training and adult education, as too many workers have weak basic and digital skills. The government's education reform and digital strategy address some of these issues."

"In 2016 the Polish government introduced a large new child benefit, called “Family 500+”, with the aim to increase fertility from a low level and reduce child poverty. The benefit is universal for the second and every further child and means-tested for the first child. Increasing out-of-work income significantly, the transfer can reduce incentives to participate in the labour market. We study the impact of the new benefit on female labour supply, using Polish Labour Force Survey data. Based on a difference-in-differences methodology we find that the labour market participation rates of women with children decreased after the introduction of the benefit compared to childless women. The estimates suggest that by mid-2017 the labour force participation rate of mothers dropped by 2- 3 percentage points, depending on the estimation specification, as a result of the “Family 500+” benefit. The effect was higher among women with lower levels of education and living in small towns."