Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

New Publication - Czech society in the 2000s: a report on socio-economic policies and structures

This book is a kind of “social report” on development over the past almost two decades in the areas of employment, social policies, income inequalities, and social structures with a focus to the situation of the middle class, pensioners and the poor, and socio-economic values relating to work and consumption. The aim is to provide a picture of Czech society using statistical and sociological surveys, and look also for systemic changes behind quantitative shifts.

Contents:

Introduction: policies, structures, inequalities and values
1 The labour market: developments and policies
2 The welfare system: past reforms and enduring
problems
3 Social inclusion: implementing EU policies
4 Disparities in earnings: education to the fore
5 Household income: rising inequality, changing
structure
6 Taxes and transfers: less redistribution, more
progressivity
7 The middle class: less advancement than
expected
8 Pensioners: changing socio-political status
9 The poor: non-working and working
10 Work values and job attitudes
11 The pervasive consumer society
12 Economic culture in transition
Conclusion: Challenges of the future
Comparative tables

“Social reporting does not get any better than this. The book is learned, comprehensive, detailed and robustly empirical. The author is a teacher of the people, not by lecturing but by informing. The book seeks to explain what happened in the Czech Republic by as far as possible displaying the facts and allowing facts to speak. It does not seek to trumpet any specific theory of transition, nor any discipline of analysis above others. Every chapter is robustly documented, including by both institutional analysis of policies and statistical analysis of social trends and distributions.”
Professor Stein Ringen, University of Oxford

“The study is a bright summary of the author’s extensive research work. It provides an original and innovative view of developments in Czech society in 1989–2008 by a high-profile researcher who has personally lived through the transition process. It is the best post-1990 socio-economic study of social developments about the Czech Republic I have read. The division of information corresponds to the basic problems of current Czech society.”
Professor Igor Tomeš, former Deputy Labour Minister and World Bank expert, Prague

Jiří Večerník is head of the Department of Economic Sociology at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and editor of the Czech Sociological Review. He has published work on the labour market and economic inequalities and cooperated with the OECD, the ILO, and the European Commission. In 1996, he published Markets and People. The Czech Reform Experience in a Comparative Perspective (Avebury). In 1999, he edited the book Ten Years of Re-building Capitalism. Czech Society after 1989 (Academia).

Distribution:

Press and Publications Department

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tel. 222 221 761

email: prodej@soc.cas.cz