Book Review: Disability Policy Reforms and Transition in Eastern and Central Europe

Elaine Fultz and Markus Ruck, Editors, Reforming Worker Protections: Disability Pensions in Transformation, International Labour Organization, Geneva, 2002.

This book deals with disability policy reforms that have taken place in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Poland in the context of the economic and political transition in Eastern and Central Europe since 1989.

The book starts with an overview chapter by Elaine Fultz on the reforms in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Poland. Then for each of these countries, the book has a separate chapter by individual authors that includes a comprehensive description of the disability pension scheme before 1989, the main elements of the policy reforms and an evaluation of the initial impact of the reform efforts when data are available.

Disability reforms in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Poland have generally tended to reduce the rates of allowances of disability pensions but, except for Poland, have not succeeded to curb disability expenditures. In all three countries, reforms have failed to make work an attractive alternative to benefit receipt and to improve the return to work rate of beneficiaries.

The book also has a chapter by Ilene Zeitzer on three Western European countries that have undertaken major reforms of their disability pensions systems, namely The Netherlands, the U.K. and Sweden.

Overall, this book contains a lot of information that is useful to anyone interested in European disability policies. After reading this book, it appears that Western and Eastern European countries have faced similar challenges associated with growing disability pension rolls and expenditures and very low return to work rates despite having fundamentally different political and economic backgrounds in the late 1980s and 1990s. The large amount of information contained in this book could serve as the basis of a comparative analysis of disability policy challenges and reforms in Western and Eastern Europe in the 1990s.

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