engleski

Welfare policy and social transfers in Croatia

The purpose of this paper is to review the range of social policies that have been adopted by the government of Croatia since independence together with those that have been retained from the socialist past and to ask whether it might be possible to improve them. The paper concentrates on issues of social security and employment. After the Introduction, in Section 2 we provide estimates of the level and composition of social expenditure in Croatia in the last two or three years. These show that the scale of public expenditure has been growing and that it is high compared with a number of other transition economies. This is also true of social expenditure within the overall budget. It is this development that has, in fact, prompted the present report. Section 3 focuses upon the labour market. It assesses evidence on participation and on the level of unemployment. It also examines evidence on inequality and poverty. Finally, it looks at the unemployment benefit to see how far it provides an adequate safety-net for those who lose their jobs. Section 4 concentrates on the structure of social welfare and social assistance programmes provided by the Croatian government. Finally, Section 5 examines possible ways in which the efficacy of the present system might be improved.

social security; Croatia

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