Policy Insights

Population ageing, decline of the European labour force, inequalities in economic activity between age groups and countries: all these challenges put European social systems to the test. How best to meet them? How to design resilient policy responses? Is the solution simply: more migration?

Three years after Covid-19 first hit Europe, it can be said that older people were among the groups most affected by the pandemic. At the same time, older people were in some ways more equipped to adapt to the reality of this social crisis – as they had lived through others before. This capacity to withstand and cope has recently been discussed as “resilience”. But what, exactly, is resilience? And how can older people’s resilience inform future policies?

Formal adult education can help promote gender equality by fostering female employment and reducing women’s disadvantages in the labour market. This can be achieved with policies that enhance work-family balance and thus reduce barriers for mothers to invest in their further education.

What help do parents actually give their children in the labor market? One key advantage is human capital, in the broadest sense. However, parents, when they can, also employ a wide array of other strategies to transmit advantages.

Asylum seekers are not deterred by the employment ban nor are they as attracted by the generosity of welfare states as they are by social networks.

The challenge of adapting to demographic changes is now more than ever on the EU agenda. It is essential to keep the demography agenda alive, strong and relevant even beyond the EU elections in 2024.

The future of the European Union should be one of the central topics in the political debate for 2023, indeed. But what does “future” mean exactly?

COVID-19 pandemic has led to life expectancy losses in Europe and overseas in the past two years but not in Denmark and its Nordic neighbours.

While the EU implements initiatives that move toward equality between immigrant and resident workers, the UK, in contrast, has become more unequal for working immigrants compared to UK residents due to the removal of the distinction between workers from EU member states and third-country workers.