Documents Adema, Willem 13 results

"The United States is at a crossroads in its policies for families and women. Currently, the United States provides basic support for children, fathers, and mothers in the form of unpaid parental leave, child-related tax breaks, and limited public child care. In contrast, the other member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) empower families through paid parental leave and comprehensive investments in infants and children. The potential gains from strengthening these policies in the United States are enormous. Paid parental leave and subsidized child-care help to get and keep more women in the workforce, contribute to economic growth, offer cognitive and health benefits to children, and give parents options in defining their preferred work-life strategy. Indeed, the United States has been falling behind the rest of the OECD in many social and economic indicators by not adequately investing in children, fathers and mothers. Given the significant payoffs to these family supports, this article focuses on issues of reconciling work and care commitments for families with young children, and, in particular, on paid parental leave policies within the OECD and the United States."

"The global economic crisis has reignited interest in social policy and public spending on different types of social benefits. Public social spending-to-GDP ratios are often used to consider the magnitude of welfare systems in international perspective, but such comparisons alone give an incomplete picture of social effort across countries. This article looks at these different factors, before briefly considering the redistributive nature of tax/benefit systems in different member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The article also considers trends in social spending and compares spending in the late 2000s with the early 1990s when the previous economic crisis played out. The article ends by illustrating the profound effect the recent global economic crisis had on social spending trends across OECD countries."

"In recent years, several OECD countries have taken steps to promote policies encouraging fathers to spend more time caring for young children, thereby promoting a more gender equal division of care work. Evidence, mainly for the United States and United Kingdom, has shown fathers taking some time off work around childbirth are more likely to be involved in childcare related activities than fathers who do not take time off . This article reports on a first cross-national analysis of the association between fathers' leave taking and fathers' involvement when children are young. It uses birth cohort data of children born around 2000 from four OECD countries: Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States. Results show that the majority of fathers take time off around childbirth independent of the leave policies in place. In all countries, except Denmark, important socio-economic differences between fathers who take leave and those who do not are observed. In addition, fathers who take leave, especially those taking two weeks or more, are more likely to carry out childcare related activities when children are young. This study adds to the evidence that suggests that parental leave for fathers is positively associated with subsequent paternal involvement."

"Following decades of progress in prosperity, female employment participation and early childhood education and care policies, the recent economic crisis which began in 2007/2008 has had a negative impact on many aspects of family and child well-being in many OECD countries. Although effects vary across countries, the growth in female employment stalled, as did the rebound in fertility rates, divorce rates went up, while child income poverty increased further. The economic crisis also affected family policy. In many countries, income support policies initially expanded but after the onset of the crisis cutbacks to government spending were often made in view of budgetary pressures. In many countries, financial supports for families are less generous now than they were prior to the crisis. By comparison, parental leave arrangements and childcare supports systems have remained largely unscathed in most OECD countries with some countries actually expanding childcare supports despite the limitations to fiscal space. This paper highlights the changes in important family outcomes and related policies that occurred in OECD countries following the onset of the economic crisis, and demonstrates how countries most affected by the crisis faced significantly worse outcomes for families and children."

"This paper assesses the extent to which the increase in women's human capital, as measured by educational attainment, has contributed to economic growth in OECD countries over the past five decades. Using cross-country/time series data covering 30 countries from 1960 to 2008 on education (the Barro-Lee dataset) and growth (update of OECD data), our results point out a positive and significant impact of the increase in women's educational attainment relative to men on output per capita growth – as measured by GDP per capita. This increase in female educational attainment implies that the comparative advantage of men relative to women regarding educational attainment has weakened over time, and has even reversed in many countries. We find that the increase in the years of education of the total population has a positive influence on output per capita growth (around 10% of GDP per capita increase per additional year of education on average), and that a more equal ratio of education by gender boosts economic growth. Our results are robust to the use of estimation procedures that do not impose homogeneity restrictions on the speed of adjustment and short-run parameters, to control for endogenetiy due to possible reverse causality and to several other robustness tests. Last, but not least, we look at the potential effect of increased female labour force participation on economic growth. The size of the effect is dependent on the rate at which male and female labour force participation will converge, with a potential gain of 12% to the size of the total economy by 2030, on average across OECD countries, if complete convergence occurs in the next 20 years."

"Part I of this paper first presents information on trends and composition of social expenditure as in the OECD Social Expenditure database for the years 1980 – 2007. Over this period, public social expenditure as a percentage of GDP, on average across OECD, increased from 15.6% to 19.2%. Public pension spending (6.4% of GDP) and public health expenditure (5.8% of GDP) are the largest social spending items.
Part I also presents social expenditure indicators that account for the effects of the tax system as well as indicators on private social expenditure. Including both of these features alters country rankings by level of social spending and leads to a convergence of spending-to-GDP ratios across countries. Based on this broader measure net total social expenditure as a percent of GDP at factor costs in 2007 was highest in France and Belgium, at 30% of GDP, and between 22 and 28% of GDP in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Part II of this paper presents the OECD SOCX Manual. It starts with a discussion of methodological, classification and data issues regarding the gross spending items as in SOCX. It also looks at the methodological aspects of measuring net social expenditure, and presents information on how relevant estimates were derived. Accounting for the effect of the tax system and private social expenditure leads to greater similarity in social expenditure-to-GDP ratios across countries and to a reassessment of the magnitude of welfare states. After accounting for the impact of taxation and private benefits, social expenditure amounts to over 30% of GDP at factor cost in Belgium and France; social expenditure also ranges within a few percentage points of each other in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States."