6 | Erhel & Guergoat-Larivière
decreasing unemployment and high employment rates, whereas continental countries had more
mitigated labour market outcomes.
The results of the synthetic index proposed in Davoine, Erhel, Guergoat-Larivière (2008a), and
in the Employment in Europe report (European Commission, 2008), confirm these differences in
job quality between countries and clusters. They are likely to be explained by some particular
policies or institutions, like education and further training policy, childcare and social dialogue,
for example. In order to test this hypothesis, we have tried to relate the job quality index to some
policy indicators that are available: the level of spending on education, variables of vocational
training effort, and indicators of investment in childcare and family policy. This analysis was
performed on the basis of the clusters presented above. The results confirm that job quality
seems to be positively influenced by education and further training policies, as well as by
childcare effort.3
Table 1. Job quality and some public policy indicators, by cluster
|
Job |
Education |
Training |
LMP: training |
Social protection |
Childcare | |
|
South |
0,89 |
4,49 |
4,00 |
0,17 |
1,25 |
0,15 |
|
Conti |
1,24 |
5,74 |
7,40 |
0,25 |
2,42 |
0,13 |
|
North |
1,59 |
7,34 |
8,33 |
0,42 |
3,27 |
0,37 |
|
NMS |
_______1,12 |
4,90 |
4,67 |
0,03 |
1,60 |
0,07 |
Notes: Training effort in companies = hours invested in vocational training per 1000 hours worked; Childcare =
percentage of children aged under 3 cared for outside the family for more than 30 hours a week/ Source:
Eurostat; Compendium, authors’ calculations.
hal-00616771, version 1 - 24 Aug 2011
Source: Eurostat; Compendium and Davoine et al. (2008a), authors’ calculations.
3 These results have to be considered carefully, as they are based on a few observations.