The key question of this study is whether policies adopted elsewhere in Europe might be useful in helping to increase the labour force participation of women and of older workers in the Netherlands, and thus improve the financial basis for social security arrangements. We examined the effectiveness of national policy measures over and above that of the individual-level determinants that are traditionally examined in economic and sociological studies. The data on labour force participation are from the European Social Survey, and information on public policy arrangements comes from the MULTILINKS database. Regarding the labour force participation of women, findings show the importance of distinguishing financial measures and care services. Women generally work fewer hours per week in countries with generous financial support for families (tax benefits, child support), and more hours in countries with generous parental leaves. Regarding the participation of older workers, findings show the importance of distinguishing the minimum pension level (negative association with the likelihood of having a job) and pension as a proportion of earned wage (no association with having a job). A novelty of the present study is its ability to demonstrate the impact of national arrangements at the level of individual participation behaviour.

Although long recognized as beneficial, a global language has not come to fruition despite considerable past efforts. A major reason is that many policy makers and citizens fear that such a universal language would undermine the particularistic, constituting primary languages of local and national communities. This dilemma can be greatly diminished by a two tier approach, in which efforts to protect the primary language will be intensified but all the nations involved would agree to use the same second language as the global one. Although theoretically the UN or some other such body could choose such a language, in effect English is increasingly occupying this position. However, policies that are in place slow down the development of a global language, often based on the mistaken assumption that people can readily gain fluency in several languages.