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Sudan and Afghanistan are among countries whose traditional social institutions result in the highest levels of discrimination against women, while Croatia and Paraguay are among those with the lowest levels of discrimination, according to the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) of 102 non-OECD countries.
Unlike existing measures of inequality which show women’s educational attainment, health or economic and political participation, the SIGI index looks at the causes inequality –social institutions, codes of behaviour, traditions and formal and informal laws. As the map below shows, many of the countries with the worst discrimination and gender inequality are found in a belt stretching from Mali to Pakistan. In most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa region, women face high levels of discrimination and inequality in social institutions. The darker the colour the higher the inequality index.
The index measures the prevalence of such practices as early marriage, polygamy and female genital mutilation and the extent of freedom of movement, of dress, of parental authority and of violence against women. Other indicators taken into account include access to land, property and credit.
The Social Institutions and Gender Index has been constructed by the OECD Development Centre, in collaboration with a research team from Göttingen University under the leadership of Professor Stephan Klasen. More information can found at www.oecd.org/dev/gender/sigi.
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A number of OECD countries such as France, Spain and the UK have established lists of occupations for which immigrant entry is allowed. The aim is to open the door to labour migration while ensuring a certain protection to domestic workers. But there is a widespread reluctance to acknowledge that a long-term demand exists for lesser skilled workers in many sectors. According to OECD, it is illusory to think that this can be met entirely through temporary migration.
Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/427003461010
Overall, permanent immigration into OECD countries continued to rise but at a slower rate than in previous years. Around 4 million foreigners settled legally in OECD countries in 2006, five per cent more than the previous year but down from the growth rates of 18 percent in 2004 and 12 percent 2005. The number of asylum seekers in OECD countries fell to to 282,000 in 2006, the lowest level since 1987.
Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/427045515037
More than 2.5 million temporary labour migrants arrived in OECD countries in 2006, a 15 percent increase over 2003. Over the same period the number of labour migrants settling permanently in OECD countries rose by more than 50 percent. The US continues to receive the most immigrants – about 1.26 million in 2006. Britain ranked second with about 340,000, followed by Spain, Canada and Germany. Sixty percent of people moving to live in European countries were of European origin. Overall, China accounts for the largest number of immigrants into OECD countries – almost 11 percent of the total in 2006. Poland ranked second with 5.3 percent and Romania third with 4.6%.
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Income inequality grew in most OECD countries between the mid 1980s and the mid 2000s. On average the income of the richest 10 percent of the population is now almost nine times higher than the poorest 10 percent. In Denmark and Sweden the gap is narrower with the richest 10% earning on average less than five times the poorest.
Only a few countries bucked the trend: France, Greece and Spain moved towards greater equality of incomes over the past 20 years.
The United States has one of the highest levels of inequality with the average earnings of the richest 10 % of the population 16 times higher than the poorest 10 percent. The gap between rich and poor in the US has also widened more rapidly than in most other countries over the past 20 years.
The two poorest and most unequal OECD countries – Mexico and Turkey – saw big rises in inequality between the mid 1980s and mid-1990s. But there were equally large falls in the subsequent decade. In the UK, inequality increased throughout the 1980s then remained stable, and fell from 2000-2005. The following tables from OECD Growing Unequal? report show trends in selected countries:
Source: Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries
Governments have been taxing more and spending more in an attempt to offset this growing income gap but reducing inequality also means ensuring that people have a decent income. OECD says governments have to get more people into work so that there is less reliance on unemployment, disability and early retirement benefits. But work alone is not sufficient to avoid poverty; more than half of poor people live in households where one or more members are in work. Public services such as education and health are distributed more equally than income. Policies to improve child development also make a difference.
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Until the latest statements suggesting unlimited guarantees, legal coverage was highest in Norway, France, Italy and Mexico. In the US the amount covered has been raised temporarily to 250,000 from 100,000 US dollars per account. The following graphs show coverage in early 2008 and the position as of 8 October 2008, based on government statements:
Source: Financial Market Trends No. 94 July 2008
For a savings insurance system to be effective in preventing bank runs in times of crisis, coverage must be set at adequate levels. Savers need to know the limits of the coverage. But consumer surveys have shown that knowledge of existing schemes is poor. A recent OECD study compared the extent of coverage as of June 2008 in 33 countries (see Further reading below).
Critics of deposit insurance schemes suggest they encourage excessive risk-taking by banks as the institutions are protected by a public safety net if things go wrong. To minimise this “moral hazard” it is important to promote good governance by banks and ensure a sound supervisory framework to deal with excessive risk taking.
Financial safety nets consist of three interrelated elements: prudential regulation and supervision, a lender of last resort and deposit insurance. If a country has developed mechanisms in only one or two of these three areas, it is still likely to face difficulties in preventing or resolving serious problems in its banking system.
* “Unlimited ?” is an interpretation of the implication of recent announcements or policy statements for effective coverage limits and that the data shown may not be identical to existing legal limits. As such the data may not be strictly comparable across countries.
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Demand for education is constantly rising. Upper secondary education is becoming the norm in most OECD countries. And most students who graduate from high school now aim to go to university. Back in 1995, only 37% of high-school graduates went into university-level programmes. Now, it's 57%, a significant jump. This “hunger for knowledge” is testing the policy and budgetary capacity of governments.
Despite big rises in spending, including increased private sector funding, expenditure on tertiary education cannot always keep up with increased demand. The result can be a bottleneck in terms of a country's economic performance. Already, there are more skilled jobs needing to be filled in OECD economies than there are people with high-level education and training qualifications to fill them.
Solving this challenge is not only a matter of increasing financial resources. It is also a question of optimising policy choices and of improving the management capacity of institutions, for example by making their financial management more efficient, more strategic and globally oriented. Countries can make very different choices to improve the efficiency of education, juggling with salary levels, the number of hours students spend in the classroom, the amount of teaching time required and the size of classes. At the tertiary level, moves to improve efficiency are needed too. Improved guidance mechanisms for students moving from secondary to tertiary-level programmes, for example, could help them make more informed choices and so increase graduation rates and ease pressures on spending. It may seem surprising, but some 31% of students in OECD countries, on average, do not complete the tertiary studies for which they enrol.
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