Slovenia

One in seven working‑age adults identifies as having a disability in OECD countries. Many of them are excluded from meaningful work and have low levels of income and social engagement. Becoming sick or disabled often leads people to leave the labour market even if they still can and want to work. Governments can help create an environment that supports a return‑to‑work for such people. This report reviews the Slovenian sickness and disability system and proposes recommendations to promote the employment of people with disability. Frequent long-term sickness absences are a growing issue in Slovenia, in part due to the design of the sickness insurance programme: workers falling ill get relatively high payments, for an unlimited time, with no activation or return-to-work offers. This report shows that intervening early is key to preventing sickness claimants from exiting the labour force. For this to occur, employers and occupational experts have to be involved sooner than at present, in a structured vocational rehabilitation process. Sickness insurance reform should provide the right work incentives, align sickness and disability assessment for long-term sickness claimants, and cap the maximum sickness benefit payment period. Cooperation between all key stakeholders in different phases of the process is critical. Such cooperation will allow the much-needed creation of a joint body responsible for the assessment of sickness, disability and vocational rehabilitation needs.

This review provides policy recommendations on how to improve the Slovenian pension system, building on the OECD’s best practices in pension design. It details the Slovenian pension system and identifies its strengths and weaknesses based on cross‑country comparisons. The Slovenian pension system consists of a mandatory defined benefit pay‑as‑you‑go public scheme and supplementary private schemes. The review also describes the first layer of old‑age social protection in Slovenia and discusses possible ways to improve communication about pensions. The OECD Reviews of Pension Systems: Slovenia is the seventh in the pension review series.

The series Investing in Youth builds on the expertise of the OECD on youth employment, social policy and skills. It covers both OECD countries and key emerging economies. The report on Slovenia presents new results from a comprehensive analysis of the situation of young people in Slovenia, exploiting various sources of survey-based and administrative data. The report provides a detailed assessment of education, employment and social policies in Slovenia from an international perspective, and offers tailored recommendations to help improve the school-to-work transition. Earlier reviews in the same series have looked at youth policies in Brazil (2014), Latvia and Tunisia (2015), Australia, Lithuania and Sweden (2016), Japan (2017), Norway (2018), and Finland, Korea and Peru (2019).

In the wake of the technological revolution that began in the last decades of the 20th century, labour-market demand for information-processing and other high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills have been growing substantially. Based on the results from the 33 countries and regions that participated in the 1st and 2nd round of the Survey of Adult Skills in 2011-12 and in 2014-15, this report describes adults’ proficiency in three information-processing skills, and examines how proficiency is related to labour-market and social outcomes. It also places special emphasis on the results from the 3rd and final round of the first cycle of PIAAC in 2017-18, which included 6 countries (Ecuador, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Peru and the United States). The Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), was designed to provide insights into the availability of some of these key skills in society and how they are used at work and at home. The first survey of its kind, it directly measures proficiency in three information-processing skills: literacy, numeracy and problem-solving in technology-rich environments.

This edition of the Reader’s Companion accompanies Skills Matter: Additional Results from the Survey of Adult Skills that reports the results from the 39 countries and regions that participated in the 3 rounds of data collection in the first cycle of PIAAC, with a particular focus on the 6 countries that participated in the third round of the study (Ecuador, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Peru and the United States). It describes the design and methodology of the survey and its relationship to other international assessments of young students and adults. The Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), was designed to provide insights into the availability of some key skills in society and how they are used at work and at home. The first survey of its kind, it directly measures proficiency in several information-processing skills – namely literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments.

A well-coordinated adult learning system will be essential to support the achievement of Slovenia’s long-term development goals. The transformational effects of globalisation, technological progress and demographic change on life at work and outside of it amplify the importance of getting adults’ skills right. OECD research shows that individuals, employers and society benefit from adults having higher levels of skills. Slovenia has achieved significant improvements in student performance and tertiary attainment in recent decades. Yet today, many adults in Slovenia have only low levels of basic skills. Participation in adult learning remains below Slovenia’s targets, especially for low-skilled, unemployed and older adults, and workers in small businesses. Against the backdrop of a growing economy and awareness about the importance of skills, Slovenia’s government, social partners and stakeholders have a unique opportunity to improve how they share responsibility and work together in the adult learning system. This report outlines how Slovenia can strengthen the enabling conditions for co-operation, co-operation between specific actors (ministries, municipalities and stakeholders), and co-operation on specific challenges (promotion and financing). It recommends eight actions that government, social partners and stakeholders can take to strengthen co-ordination and co-operation, in order to improve participation, outcomes and cost-effectiveness in adult learning.

This report is part of the OECD Tax Policy Reviews. The Reviews are intended to provide independent, comprehensive and comparative assessments of OECD member and non-member countries’ tax systems as well as concrete recommendations for tax policy reform. By identifying tailored tax policy reform options, the objective of the Reviews is to enhance the design of existing tax policies and to support the adoption of new reforms. This report provides a comprehensive tax policy assessment of the taxes paid by individuals in Slovenia as well as tax reform recommendations. The report is divided into six chapters, with a summary of the main findings upfront, followed by more detailed recommendations at the end of chapters 3 to 6.  Chapter 1 sets the scene for tax reform in Slovenia. Chapter 2 focuses on the labour market, social policy and tax policy related challenges. The ensuing chapters assess the financing of the social security system (Chapter 3), identify strategies to strengthen the design of personal income tax (Chapter 4), indirect taxes (Chapter 5), and the taxation of capital income at the individual level (Chapter 6).