The Economics of Inclusion
Fiscal analysis, policy research, and expert perspectives on the economic case for work inclusion.
Research Segments
Labour Exclusion
True labour market exclusion across Europe — beyond the headline unemployment rate
Fiscal Cost of Exclusion
What it costs the state in disability and sickness benefits when people are kept out of work, compared across European countries.
Inclusion ventures
Startups and companies whose business is getting disabled, neurodivergent and other excluded people into work — how they developed, what they measure, and where they struggled.
Investing in inclusion
The investors, funds and public schemes that finance companies getting excluded people into work, the instruments they use, and how they measure success.
European Union
Proof It Works
Real organisations already doing this — the employers and public programmes behind the numbers.
Norway's Unicus helped form the largest autistic-majority company
373 autistic technologists of 494 staff · 287 client companies in 2025
Learn moreSweden's largest company is built around jobs for disabled people
1,310 moved on to other employers in 2025 · Creating jobs since 1980
Learn moreNearly 110,000 people in Denmark’s fleksjob scheme — a record
Just under 110,000 full-time persons in the scheme (2023) · Up 40,000 since 2013
Learn moreThe tech company that let candidates show the work, not ace an interview
260+ colleagues in the programme · Active in 16 countries
Learn moreA 750+ member Dutch employer network making inclusive hiring the normal thing to do
750+ partner employers · SMEs to large national companies, public and private
Learn moreIKEA retailer Ingka opens job pathways for refugees in 26 countries
4,300+ refugees supported since 2019 · 26 countries
Learn moreShe asked 500 CEOs to put disability on the board agenda. They said yes.
500 companies committed · Over $23 trillion combined market cap · 22M employees
Learn morePoland's national fund subsidises the wages of over 200,000 disabled workers
203,300 subsidised workers (Dec 2025) · 135,900 on the open labour market · 33,650 employers
Learn moreLatest Analysis
Read full report →The Netherlands: 3.7% Unemployment Hides Hundreds of Thousands on Disability Benefits
Unemployment in the Netherlands is just 3.7%, yet hundreds of thousands of working-age adults rely on disability, sickness and social assistance benefits — and reforms since 2006 have cut inflow without solving the low employment of people on the partial-disability (WGA) benefit.
Denmark's Flexjob System: A Record-Size Disability Employment Scheme — and Its Limits
Denmark's flexjob programme — a wage-subsidy arrangement for people with permanently reduced work capacity — has grown to a record size since the 2013 reform. After more than two decades, the evidence on what it adds to employment is more mixed than its scale suggests.
Sweden: From Disability Pension to Work-First — A Policy Experiment in Progress
Sweden tightened its disability benefit rules in 2008, and the number of people on sickness compensation has since fallen by more than half. But what happens to people who are refused? Official evaluations show most return to work — while a minority are left with no income at all.
Built on inclusion: what the numbers say about auticon, Specialisterne, Nyby and the investors behind them
Two new InkludX sections profile companies whose business is getting excluded people into work, and the capital that funds them — setbacks included.
All pieces
Read full report →Designing Disability Insurance Reforms: Tightening Eligibility Rules or Reducing Benefits?
Using a sufficient-statistics framework for the welfare effects of disability insurance, applied to two restrictive DI reforms in Austria, this Econometrica paper finds that tighter eligibility rules triggered higher fiscal cost savings and lower insurance losses, so tighter eligibility rules dominate benefit reductions in scaling back the Austrian DI system.
Disability, Work and Inclusion: Mainstreaming in All Policies and Practices
OECD review from 2022 finding that disability employment and poverty gaps remain high: the employment rate of people with disability is 27 percentage points lower than for people without disability, a gap that has remained constant over the past decade, and one in four people with disability live in households with incomes below 60% of the median, compared to one in seven people without disability.
Voices & Authors
View all voices →Politicians, economists, advocates, and authors shaping the economics of work inclusion
Angelina Atanasova
Research Support Officer, Working Life Unit
Eurofound (EU Agency), Dublin
Research support officer in Eurofound's Working Life unit, working on social dialogue, industrial relations and disability rights. Her 2023 ETUI policy brief, written at the European Social Observatory, drew on Eurostat data showing an EU disability employment gap of 21.4 percentage points in 2022 (from 8.5pp in Luxembourg to 37pp in Ireland) and called for better data collection, social-partner engagement and gender mainstreaming. Holds a PhD in EU law from KU Leuven.
Anne Skevik Grødem
Research Professor
NOVA / OsloMet
Research Professor at NOVA, OsloMet, and one of the OsloMet researchers who contributed to the 2025 government-commissioned review of Norway's health-related benefits (sickness benefits, work assessment allowance and disability benefit). Her research spans pensions, older workers and late-career transitions, and welfare policy, including a current knowledge synthesis on sick-leave schemes and return to work.
Bernd Fitzenberger
Director
IAB — Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Nuremberg
Director of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the research institute of Germany's Federal Employment Agency, since 2019, and Professor of Quantitative Labour Economics at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. He has written on Germany's labour shortages, including how they coexist with registered unemployment and a large 'silent reserve' of people outside the labour force.
Catherine Naughton
Director
European Disability Forum (EDF), Brussels
Director of the European Disability Forum (EDF), the umbrella organisation of representative organisations of persons with disabilities in Europe. She has an academic background in public health and 25 years of experience in the field of disability, with a focus on disability-inclusive international development, and was Vice President of Social Platform (2017–2023).
Ed Miliband
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
UK Government / Labour Party
Labour cabinet minister; Energy Secretary 2024–2026 and Foreign Secretary since July 2026. In March 2025, as the government announced its welfare reform package, he was reported to be among cabinet ministers who had privately voiced concerns about the planned disability benefit cuts.
Editorial content — not peer reviewed
Frances Ryan
Journalist, Author, Disability Columnist
The Guardian (UK)
Guardian columnist, author and activist for disabled people. Author of 'Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People' (Verso, 2019), which explored the impact of the UK austerity programme on disabled people. Won Commentator of the Year (Broadsheet) at the Society of Editors' Media Freedom Awards 2024.
Editorial content — not peer reviewed
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