Looks at and synthesizes the experience of governments, employers and trade unions in various countries.

Since its timid introduction onto the EC agenda in 1974, reconciliation of work and family life has developed into a fully-articulated principle. This book explores this journey and its implications for the EC legal order and society. It argues that as reconciliation issues continue to evolve they require constant reassessment.

This book synthesises the finding of the 13 individual country reviews published previously and extends the scope to include other OECD countries, examining tax/benefit policies, parental leave systems, child care support, and workplace practices.

This study, part of a series on OECD countries, considers how a tax/benefit and childcare policies and workplace practices help determine parental labour market outcomes and may impinge on family formation in Canada, Finland, Sweden and the UK.

This OECD study, part of a series on OECD countries, considers how a tax/benefit and childcare policies and workplace practices help determine parental labour market outcomes and may impinge on family formation in New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland.

This first OECD review of the reconciliation of work and family life looks at the challenges parents of young children confront when trying to square their work and care commitments, and the implications for social and labour market trends.

This OECD study considers how a wide range of policies, including tax/benefit policies, childcare policies, and employment and workplace practices, help determine parental labour market outcomes and family formation in Austria, Ireland and Japan.

At the risk of sounding frivolous, there is a good case to be made for the argument that women constitute the revolutionary force behind contemporary social and economic transformation. It is in large part the changing role of women that explains the new household structure, our altered demographic behaviour, the growth of the service economy and, as a consequence, the new dilemmas that the advanced societies face. Most European countries have failed to adapt adequately to the novel challenges and the result is an increasingly serious disequilibrium. Women explicitly desire economic independence and the societal collective, too, needs to maximise female employment. And yet, this runs up against severe incompatibility problems that then result in very low birth rates. Our aging societies need more kids, yet fertility levels are often only half of what citizens define as their desired number of children. No matter what happens in the next decade, we are doomed to have exceedingly small cohorts that, in turn, must shoulder the massive burden of supporting a retired baby-boom generation. Hence it is tantamount that tomorrow’s adults be maximally productive and, yet, the typical EU member state invests very little in its children and families.

This OECD study, part of a series on OECD countries, considers how a tax/benefit and childcare policies and workplace practices help determine parental labour market outcomes and may impinge on family formation in New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland.