Browse by: "2022"

Growing up in socio-economic disadvantage has important and long-lasting effects on children’s lives. Children from disadvantaged households often fall behind in many areas of well-being and development, with effects that continue to limit their opportunities and outcomes – including their health and labour market outcomes – long after they reach adulthood.

Drawing on Europe-wide survey data from 27 countries, this paper explores how childhood socio-economic disadvantage affects later adult labour market and health outcomes, and evaluates the country-level GDP-equivalent cost of childhood disadvantage due to lost employment, lost earnings, and lost health, as well as the costs of lost government revenue and benefit spending. Results point to large costs for societies from childhood socio-economic disadvantage, totalling on average the equivalent of 3.4% of GDP annually.

The current economic environment, the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing megatrends, such as digitalisation and the green transformation, threaten equality of opportunity and social mobility for current and future generations. High-quality cross-country evidence is necessary to implement policies to mitigate these threats, but critical data gaps remain.

This paper provides updated indicators on equality of opportunity and social mobility across OECD countries and discusses ongoing challenges and opportunities to break down barriers to social mobility and promote equal opportunities for all. It also reviews four areas where more evidence is needed to inform effective policies: the extent of opportunity gaps across population groups; how unequal upbringings affect chances later in life; how growing economic insecurity and large wealth inequalities limit social mobility; and unequal distribution of opportunities across cities and regions. Work in these areas will inform the agenda of the OECD Observatory on Social Mobility and Equal Opportunity.

Despite calls for the reform of incentives, including subsidies, harmful to biodiversity, including under the Convention on Biological Diversity and its 2011-2020 Aichi Targets, very few countries to date have undertaken what is considered the first step in this process, namely, to identify and assess the types and magnitudes of any incentives in place at the national level which are harmful for biodiversity or the environment more broadly.

This paper begins with a brief literature review on subsidies harmful to biodiversity, followed by a detailed review and comparison of the existing national level studies to identify and assess subsidies and other incentives harmful to biodiversity or the environment. The report concludes with guidance and good practice insights to identify and assess subsidies and other incentives harmful to biodiversity, at national level.

This paper estimates the long-run elasticity of emissions and carbon-related government revenues to carbon pricing. It is based on the OECD Effective Carbon Rates database, the most comprehensive cross-country longitudinal database on direct and indirect carbon pricing. Econometric estimates suggest that a EUR 10 increase in carbon pricing decreases CO2 emissions from fossil fuels by 3.7% on average in the long term. In such a scenario, carbon-related government revenues would triple at global level, though over time they are expected to dwindle as additional increases in carbon pricing result in further reductions in emissions. Broadening carbon pricing to currently unpriced emissions contributes to two thirds of the effects on emissions and revenues. At the country level, emissions and government revenues responses differ depending on countries’ sectoral structure and fuel sources. Dynamic simulations based on these estimates reveal that even large effective carbon rates (about EUR 1000 per tonne by late 2030s) will not suffice to meet net-zero emission targets. A sensitivity analysis shows that this result is robust to a large range of elasticity estimates. Reaching net zero then calls for complementary policies aiming at broadening and raising carbon prices, and drastically increasing the substitution of clean energy sources for fossil fuels through innovation and reallocation.

Data are shown to generate efficiency gains but to have been unevenly shared across firms and households, and the subpar economic performance of most advanced economies (prior to the pandemic) has been attributed to increased market power originating, at least in part, from the increased use of data. To sharpen our understanding of these divergent perceptions of the modern digital age, this paper puts the recent increase in use of digitised information, i.e., data, into an economic framework amenable to measurement and analysis. Data are conceptualised as an intangible asset: a storable factor input that is only partially captured in existing macroeconomic and financial statistics. Our proposed framework treats data as an intangible asset that contributes to final production in an economy. This paper provides the conceptual groundwork that is needed for defining and measuring data investments. We also provide a review of methods that are used to measure data, and we offer an experimental implementation of our framework. We also develop preliminary estimates of data assets intended to fully encompass the “intelligence” or “knowledge” generated by the use of data that are coherent with national accounts data at the industry-level of analysis as well as with measures of intangibles developed by EUKLEMS-INTANProd.

Ten years ago, a devastating earthquake, tsunamis and nuclear accident in Japan took thousands of lives and affected millions of people. This unprecedented disaster generated numerous lessons for policymakers in Japan and around the world on how to prepare, respond to and recover from shocks, and build resilient communities, regions and societies. The 30 to 40 year process of decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station offers the impetus and a rare window of opportunity to cultivate long-term, sustainable growth and resilience in the region and beyond. This Policy Brief presents the outcomes of the OECD-Japan Policy Dialogue on Developing Decommissioning Industry Clusters in Fukushima, conducted in 2019–20. It discusses the opportunities and challenges related to the decommissioning, and the policy options for sustainable recovery and development in the region. It also presents experiences and lessons relevant to Fukushima from other OECD regions and cities. While the brief is designed for local readers (e.g. policy makers, the private sector, academia, civil society), it also aims to raise the global profile of Fukushima’s ongoing reconstruction and recovery efforts.

Strong career guidance systems allow students to explore potential futures in work through authentic and personalised interactions with people in work and their workplaces. One form of career exploration that can be expected to be of particular value to young people is job shadowing. Typically undertaken between the ages of 13 and 16, job shadowing allows students to visit workplaces to investigate their career plans through discussions with professionals working in fields of interest. This Policy Brief summarises evidence on the impact of teenage job shadowing on adult employment outcomes; presents international data on the characteristics of students who job shadow; draws on the research literature and national examples of practice to illustrate why and how job shadowing can be expected to benefit students and provides a step-by-step guide to the effective design of job shadowing programmes.

Digital transformation affects every aspect of our lives, providing new spaces and tools for us to connect, work, consume, and enjoy our rights. It offers a multitude of social and economic opportunities, but also brings new and complex risks. An empowering and safe digital environment that puts people first is therefore a core policy goal of the digital age. Through the lens of a fictional family navigating these opportunities and risks, this paper looks at how digital transformation impacts us as individuals, be it as citizens, consumers, or workers. It outlines the policy landscape, and describes the international, multi-stakeholder, and nuanced efforts needed to strike a balance between different rights, interests, and values. A background paper for the 2022 Digital Economy Ministerial meeting, this paper supports senior policy makers in designing and achieving a human-centric digital transformation.

Building more equitable, connected, cohesive and sustainable societies is at the top of policy agendas, but several challenges stand in the way of achieving this goal. The report focuses on three key challenges policy makers face in the pursuit of better societies: bridging digital divides, combatting harmful content online, and effectively harnessing digital technologies to fight climate change and other environmental problems. This report provides insights into key trends across OECD countries and partner economies, and offers policy actions that can help decision makers tackle these three critical challenges, together with better measurement. The report builds on previous work on the topic and seeks to inform further debate and discussion on how to ensure that today’s divides, biases and inequalities are not perpetuated into the future.

AI and emerging technologies offer tremendous opportunities for well-being, productivity, growth and solving pressing societal challenges. However, they also pose risks to human rights, fairness and human agency, among others. Many countries recognise the need to develop forward-looking policies and adapt governance frameworks to keep pace with these developments and to leverage technological benefits while mitigating risks. This paper builds on the OECD’s extensive work on AI, data governance and connectivity to support policy makers in this process. It highlights the importance of co-operating internationally to ensure that emerging technologies are trustworthy and calls for building a common understanding of AI and emerging technologies, sharing good practices and creating the evidence base to inform policy design, implementation and evaluation.

Digital technologies have transformed the global economy. This paper discusses three underlying digital enablers of the economy and the challenges they pose for policy makers: (1) Online platforms, which support global transactions and interactions but are also disrupting existing consumer and competition policy frameworks; (2) Cross-border data flows, which facilitate global trade and co-operation but also amplify policy concerns that have motivated countries to place conditions on these data flows; and (3) Digital security, which should be prioritised to embed trust into the digital economy, but has often remained an afterthought owing to knowledge asymmetries across the market. Given that these challenges are all international in nature, a global response is needed to address them. The OECD is well-suited to foster international co-operation on these digital enablers and support countries’ ambitions for global digital policy frameworks.