How to improve the labour market outcomes of women in Hungary?

The OECD, commissioned by the Hungarian government and the European Union, collected best practices and policy recommendations in a report on female labour market participation in Hungary. The report focused on how to best close the gender gap in the employment rate. 

To this end, BI was hired to reach out to Hungarian stakeholders: semi-structured online interviews and focus group discussions with them served as a useful source of policy solutions as well as to identify challenges in the implementation process.

The primary focus of the report concerned the mechanisms that influence the decision of mothers to enter the labour market. These included child care benefits, the availability of nurseries and the conditions of getting a place there, and the effects of flexible working hours, changes in education practices and other policy instruments aiming to help mothers’ participation in the labour force.

Subsequently, BI also conducted quantitative research in order to identify the employment impact of access to day-care settings and how this impact changes over time, using data from the 2011 Census and the 2016 Microcensus. The results  have been published in the Working Paper series of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.

Commissioned by the OECD, BI was in charge of developing the methodology of interviews and the focus group discussions as well as organizing and conducting them.