Publications

La littératie, un atout pour la vie est le deuxième rapport de l’Enquête sur la littératie et les compétences des adultes. Il présente des résultats supplémentaires sur la nature et l’ampleur des écarts en littératie qui existent dans les pays de l’OCDE et sur l’évolution à moyen terme de ces écarts.Il jette un nouvel éclairage sur les facteurs qui influencent l’acquisition des compétences des adultes dans divers contextes – à la maison et au travail – dans les onze pays ayant participé au premier et au dernier cycles de collecte de données entre 2003 et 2008. L’étude présente des données comparatives quant à l’incidence de divers facteurs sur l’offre de compétences. Elle ménage une place de choix aux compétences en numératie et en résolution de problèmes, et explore les liens entre la numératie et les facteurs sociodémographiques clés ainsi que les résultats sur le marché du travail et les gains.L’étude met en lumière l’importance de la résolution de problèmes en définissant cette compétence de base et en explorant ses facteurs déterminants ainsi que son influence relative sur les résultats importants sur le marché du travail.Le rapport présente aussi une analyse du rendement dans plusieurs domaines de compétence. Il examine les profils de compétences de divers groupes de population définis en fonction des caractéristiques démographiques et socioéconomiques des personnes dont les résultats sont jugés faibles dans un ou plusieurs domaines de compétence et explore les conséquences qui en résultent.Enfin, le rapport examine la disparité des compétences sur le marché du travail et son lien avec l’apprentissage des adultes. L’ampleur et la répartition de la disparité entre les exigences courantes en matière de littératie et les compétences en littératie des travailleurs constituent un enjeu important qui est abordé dans cette étude.

Being able to measure people’s quality of life is fundamental when assessing the progress of societies. There is now widespread acknowledgement that measuring subjective well-being is an essential part of measuring quality of life alongside other social and economic dimensions. As a first step to improving the measures of quality of life, the OECD has produced Guidelines which provide advice on the collection and use of measures of subjective well-being.  These Guidelines have been produced as part of the OECD Better Life Initiative, a pioneering project launched in 2011, with the objective to measure society’s progress across eleven domains of well-being, ranging from jobs, health and housing, through to civic engagement and the environment.These Guidelines represent the first attempt to provide international recommendations on collecting, publishing, and analysing subjective well-being data. They provide guidance on collecting information on people's evaluations and experiences of life, as well as on collecting 'eudaimonic' measures of psychological well-being. The Guidelines also outline why measures of subjective well-being are relevant for monitoring and policy making, and why national statistical agencies have a critical role to play in enhancing the usefulness of existing measures. They identify the best approaches for measuring, in a reliable and consistent way, the various dimensions of subjective well-being, and provide guidance for reporting on such measures. The Guidelines also include a number of prototype survey modules on subjective well-being that national and international agencies can use in their surveys.

Tax revenues provide governments with funds to invest in development, relieve poverty, deliver public services and build the physical and social infrastructure for long-term growth. Moreover, there are mutually beneficial links between taxation and good governance. Tax and Development: Aid Modalities for Strengthening Tax Systems highlights how taxation can have a positive effect on the quality of governance and a government’s relationship with citizens and, in turn, how good governance can have a positive effect on compliance and revenue mobilisation. How can international assistance providers, including OECD members, international and regional organisations, support the development of tax systems in developing countries? Tax and Development: Aid Modalities for Strengthening Tax Systems provides practical guidance for policy makers and practitioners based on the results of an extensive literature review, a survey of aid agency officials and six country case studies (Ghana, Guatemala, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, and Tanzania). It examines the aid instruments that donors use to assist developing countries including general and sector budget support, basket financing, stand-alone bilateral aid and funding South-South organisations. The strengths and weaknesses of each modality for supporting tax systems are identified, and some 50 recommendations to support the development of effective, efficient and growth-oriented tax systems in developing countries are provided.

Tackling mental ill-health of the working-age population is becoming a key issue for labour market and social policies in OECD countries. OECD governments increasingly recognise that policy has a major role to play in keeping people with mental ill-health in employment or bringing those outside of the labour market back to it, and in preventing mental illness. This report on Sweden is the second in a series of reports looking at how the broader education, health, social and labour market policy challenges identified in Sick on the Job? Myths and Realities about Mental Health and Work (OECD, 2012) are being tackled in a number of OECD countries. It concludes that Swedish policy makers recognise the need to take steps to tackle mental ill-health and its labour market implications, but that a more comprehensive reform effort and a long-term commitment to it is needed in order to prevent problems from arising in the first place and respond more effectively when they do occur.

Tackling mental ill-health of the working-age population is becoming a key issue for labour market and social policies in OECD countries. OECD governments increasingly recognise that policy has a major role to play in keeping people with mental ill-health in employment or bringing those outside of the labour market back to it, and in preventing mental illness. This report on Norway is the fourth in a series of reports looking at how the broader education, health, social and labour market policy challenges identified in Sick on the Job? Myths and Realities about Mental Health and Work (OECD, 2012) are being tackled in a number of OECD countries. It concludes that Norway faces a unique situation whereby a generous welfare system stimulates large-scale labour market exclusion and significant socio-economic inequalities of people with a mental disorder, and hindering better outcomes of its employment and vocational rehabilitation programmes.

La fourniture de services d’approvisionnement en eau, d’assainissement et de traitement des eaux usées a des répercussions très favorables sur la santé publique, l’économie et l’environnement. Dans les pays en développement, le rapport avantages/coûts peut aller jusqu’à 7 pour 1 pour les services d’eau et d’assainissement de base. Les actions en matière de traitement des eaux usées, par exemple, peuvent s’accompagner d’effets très positifs en termes de santé publique et d’environnement, ainsi que pour certains secteurs économiques comme la pêche, le tourisme et le marché de l’immobilier.Les retombées favorables des services d’eau sont rarement considérées dans leur pleine mesure pour différentes raisons, notamment la difficulté de quantifier d’importants avantages non économiques tels que les valeurs de non-usage, la dignité, le statut social, la propreté et le bien-être général. Par ailleurs, les informations concernant les avantages liés aux services d’eau sont souvent enfouies dans des documents techniques et échappent aux principaux décideurs des ministères.Ce rapport réunit et résume les informations existantes sur les avantages de l’eau et de l’assainissement.

By 2015, half of the world’s people living on less than USD 1.25 a day will be in fragile states. While poverty has decreased globally, progress on Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 is slower in fragile states than in other developing countries. Fragile states are also off-track to meet the rest of the MDGs by 2015. Fragile situations became a central concern of the international development and security agenda in the 1990s. Since then, powerful forces have been influencing the causes and manifestations of fragility, including the combination of democratic aspirations, new technologies, demographic shifts and climate change. The last five years have been especially tumultuous, encompassing the 2008 food, fuel and financial crisis and the Arab Spring, which began in 2011.These events have influenced the international debate on the nature, relevance and implications of fragility. While situations of fragility clearly have common elements – including poverty, inequality and vulnerability – how can we make sense of the great diversity in their national income, endowment in natural resources or historical trajectories? How do we move towards a more substantive concept of fragility that goes beyond a primary focus on the quality of government policies and institutions to include a broader picture of the economy and society? This publication takes stock of i) the evolution of fragility as a concept, ii) analyses of financial flows to and within fragile states between 2000 and 2010, and iii) trends and issues that are likely to shape fragility in the years to come.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Forum on Stakeholder Confidence (FSC) Annotated Glossary is a review of concepts central to societal decision making about radioactive waste management. It records the evolution in understanding that has taken place in the group as the FSC has worked with these concepts over time. This should be a useful resource not only for new FSC participants but also for others: this annotated glossary forms a good reference handbook for future texts regarding societal aspects of radioactive waste management and its governance.

This roadmap outlines emissions reduction potential from all technologies that can be implemented in the Indian cement industry. Taking into account the specificities of the Indian context, markets and opportunities, this roadmap outlines a possible transition path for the Indian cement industry to support the global goal of halving CO 2 emissions by 2050.