GOING FOR GROWTH AND INCLUSIVENESS?

“Going for Growth” is one of the flagship publications of the OECD Economics Department. It contains a country specific list of “what-to- reform” in order to improve employment and productivity performance. The novelty in the 2017 version of this report, released on the 17^th of March, is that the dimension of “inclusiveness” is integrated for the first time. Or, as the opening paragraph of the relevant chapter says: “Higher growth is not systematically associated with rising living standards for the vast majority of citizens”.

To integrate inclusiveness, the OECD applies the same method as it is using for the two other pillars of “Going for Growth” (employment, productivity). First, a dashboard of indicators on income inequalities, labour market performance (both quantity as quality of jobs) and non-income dimensions (health outcomes and inequalities) allows detecting performance weaknesses (see summary figure attached). In a second step, these gaps in performance are matched with weaknesses in related policies. After checking with country experts, policy recommendations are formulated.

The attached paper provides an assessment from the side of the TUAC secretariat.