Beyond the National: How the EU, OECD, and World Bank Do Family Policy

Abstract

AbstractIn recent decades, numerous international organizations have adopted positions that use components of a policy frame familiar from family policy at the national level. They sought to advance one or more of three classic goals of that domain: stabilizing demography, ensuring income security, and supporting parents’ labor force participation. This chapter tracks the last several decades of policy action in three international organizations—the European Union, the OECD, and the World Bank. It documents the changing interventions of each organization that touch on these three goals, whether or not the organization claims to be committed to having family policy. The analysis focuses in particular on the expressed policy goal(s), the targets and policy instruments, and the policy frame used to justify each. The main finding is that despite different trajectories over time the three share processes leading to non-familialization via greater emphasis on individuals and often children.