New Zealand

The present study examines child poverty, child care and corporal punishment bans across three nations representing three welfare regimes – France (Conservative), New Zealand (Liberal), and Denmark (Social Democratic). An examination of child poverty revealed that Denmark does best in protecting children from poverty, followed by France and lastly New Zealand – with small variation from their ideal welfare regime type.

When Minister of Finance Grant Robertson announced in this year’s budget that his government was developing a social unemployment insurance scheme, people could have been forgiven for seeing this as largely positive.

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Minimum wages are common but controversial. Three out of four OECD countries use them, and supporting low-wage earners is widely seen as important for promoting inclusive growth. But views differ about whether such support is best provided through minimum wages, or closely related policies, such as government transfers. This policy brief considers three aspects that are central for a balanced assessment of policy choices: The cost of employing minimum-wage workers, their take-home pay, and the number of workers affected.

As of January 2022, a total of 3,856 social protection and labor measures were planned or implemented by 223 economies. This constitutes a net increase of 523 measures, or 15.6 percent since the last update in May 2021. While noteworthy, such increase is the lowest among net additions observed over previous semesters. In fact, the global pace of measures’ introduction over January 2020-January 2022 has been slowing down. This report focuses on the real-time review of country measures in terms of social protection and job responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19).

In addition to collecting data of government policy responses to the Covid-19, our members also write reports and research notes about the countries they are documenting as well as particular Covid-19 issues. Please browse these reports and research notes below.