Abstract:
Social policy covers a great number of issues which do not stand on their own but, as is increasingly recognised, are both diverse and interlinked. For example, tackling social exclusion involves simultaneously addressing barriers to labour market reintegration, health care issues and educational aspects. Social indicators have been developed to provide the broad perspective needed for any international comparison and assessment of social trends and policies. By linking social status and social response indicators across a broad range of policy areas, social indicators help readers to identify whether and how the broad thrust of public social policies and societal actions are addressing key social policy issues. Social indicators aim to serve the need for a concise overview of social trends and policies while paying due attention to the different national contexts in which such policies are being pursued. Thus, the OECD social indicators include both context indicators that illustrate national differences in social trends, and social status and response indicators, categorised in four broad and interdependent areas of social policy: self-sufficiency, equity, health and social cohesion. This publication captures in a nutshell information covering a wide range of topics, amongst others: fertility rates, asylum seekers and refugees, employment, retirement ages, early childhood education and care, replacement rates, relative poverty, the gender wage gap, social expenditure, potential years of life lost, health infrastructure, suicide, group membership and prisoners.