Social Legislation of Foreign Countries in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Review. The article attempts to synthesize the experience of legal regulation of relations in the sphere of labour and social welfare of the population in foreign countries in the 21st century. On the basis of comparative - legal analysis of acts of modern social legislation the author identifies the main trends in the development of this legislation, such as the increasing role of international legal standards in the social sphere; the institutionalization of social responsibility of enterprises; scaling up support for those most prone to social risk (youth, women, persons with disabilities, senior citizens); specification of legislative regulation of atypical forms of employment (remote work, houshold employee, precarious work, etc.); codification of the principles of the concept of "flexicurity" (balance of flexibility of labour relations and social protection of workers); health reform, aimed at narrowing the guarantees in the sphere of obligatory health insurance; reforming pension systems to optimize their funding (increasing the retirement age, reducing the opportunities for early retirement, extension of funded component of the pension, changing of the order of pension indexation, increase in premium rate, etc.) The novelty of the research lies in the fact that there has been made an attempt to conduct systematic analysis of the main trends of the development of social legislation of foreign countries in the 21st century. The article presents the author's interpretation of the basic stages of development of social legislation of foreign countries. The author provides some findings that can be used to develop further reforms of domestic social legislation. The effectiveness of specific measures of legislative regulation of social workers is illustrated by examples of individual countries.