September 25 (SeeNews) - Serbia needs to improve its labour market, tax and social policies in order to limit the growth of inequality, the World Bank said on Tuesday.
Changes in the occupation structure in Serbia were similar to those observed in Western Europe and show evidence of some job polarisation: non-routine, task-intensive jobs grew as a share of wage employment, while routine, task-intensive occupations, which are more prone to automatisation, decreased, the World Bank said in a statement.
The index of inequality of opportunity in access to tertiary education for those born in the 1980s is more than twice as much as that of those born in the 1940s, the World Bank said in a report on policies to ease the growing divide between those who benefit from new economic opportunities and those who are left behind in an ever-more flexible economy.
Inequality across regions is relatively strong in Serbia as the country is in the top third of the countries with most spatial inequality in Europe and Central Asia, the report "Towards a New Social Contract" says.
"The average gap in household per capita consumption between the richest and the poorest region is $1,655 (1,407 euro)."
Spatial gaps also exist in consumption as well as in other relevant outcomes, such as PISA test scores. The gap in the 2015 PISA test scores between urban and rural areas in Serbia was equivalent to more than one schooling year of difference. Closing spatial disparities by ensuring that people build the human capital they need and that they can access opportunities will lead to more inclusive growth, the World Bank said.
Poverty in Serbia has declined, but the expansion of the middle class has also decelerated. While the population share of the poor fell sharply from 2000 to 2015, in Serbia the share of the middle class - defined as those individuals who live with between $11 and $28 per day - fell from 43% in 2008 to 38% in 2013.
($ = 0.850316 euro)