This report is the outcome of a collective effort with contributions from a team of economists and policy analysts mainly from the OECD Jobs and Income Division of the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (ELS). Principal authors of the chapters were Horacio Levy (Jobs and Income Division): Chapters 2, 3 and 4; Andrea Salvatori (Skills and Employment Division): Chapter 3; and Richard Clarke and Sebastian Königs (Jobs and Income Division): Chapter 5. Luis Cecchi and Thomas Manfredi (Jobs and Income Division) contributed to all chapters and provided statistical and research assistance. Vanda Almeida, Alexandre Georgieff, Alix-Anne Paris and Céline Thévenot (Jobs and Income Division at the time of writing) provided contributions to Chapters 3 and 4.
Michael Förster (Jobs and Income Division) led the team and co-ordinated the project and the publication. Stéphane Carcillo, Head of the OECD Jobs and Income Division, supervised the preparation of this report and co-authored Chapter 1 with Michael Förster. Liv Gudmundson and Lucy Hulett together with Joanne Dundon and Anna Tarutina prepared the manuscript for publication. Ken Kincaid contributed to the editing of the report.
We are very grateful to Gabriela Ramos (OECD Chief of Staff and Sherpa to the G20), Stefano Scarpetta (Director of ELS), Mark Pearson (Deputy Director of ELS), Monika Queisser (Senior Counsellor in ELS) and Romina Boarini (Co-ordinator of the Inclusive Growth Initiative), for their guidance and extensive comments on various versions of the report. We gratefully acknowledge the many suggestions provided or channelled by members of the Working Party on Social Policy and the Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee of the OECD as well as by experts of the European Commission. We also thank colleagues from OECD Directorates for their comments and suggestions: the Economics Department, the Directorate for Education and Skills, the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, the Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, the Directorate for Public Governance and the Statistics Directorate. Finally, we are indebted to Pauline Grégoire-Marchand (France Stratégie), Robert Joyce (Institute for Fiscal Studies), Ive Marx (University of Antwerp), Jörg Neugschwender (LIS – Luxembourg Income Study Data Center), Ivaylo D. Petev (École Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Économique - ENSAE), Tim van Rie (European Commission) and István Tóth (Hungarian Tárki Social Research Institute) for their comments and suggestions on the initial drafts of several chapters of this report.
The OECD work on the middle class was carried out with the financial assistance of the European Union, DG Employment, and the Chilean Ministry of Social Development, and the OECD would like to thank them for their support. The report also benefited from a close collaboration with Masato Shikata from the Keio University Institute for Economic Studies, for country specific analyses.
This document was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the OECD member countries or the European Union.