Social security, Labour Market and Restructuring – Russia and Ukraine
In Social security, Labour Market and Restructuring – Russia and Ukraine (CASE Network E-Brief 5/2010) expert Anna Ruzik looks back at the evolution of the labour market and social security in the past two decades. In her narrative, she pays special attention to growing gender differences.
The transition from centrally led social safety nets to post-communist social security systems went hand-in-hand with a demographic decline and an ageing population. Because poverty drove many young and elderly to the (shadow) labour market, activity rates remained high in the early years of transition. In the second half of the 1990’s unemployment rose and, as a result, a formerly rather insignificant gender gap widened.
Anna Ruzik welcomes recent reforms of the social safety net, but worries about the effectiveness of social support programmes stating that social aid does not reach the target groups sufficiently.
