In May 2004, the European Union (EU) experienced the largest expansion in its history when it accepted 10 new member states, among them eight Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Two other CEE countries, Bulgaria and Romania, joined the enlarged EU in January 2007. The enlargement put an end to the painful division of the European continent and enhanced prospects of sharing Europe's rich cultural heritage in peace. At the same time, enlargement has increased the cultural heterogeneity, social disparities and economic imbalances within the EU, exemplified, for instance, by the below-average living standards and above-average unemployment rates in some of the new member states.

In modern societies, education systems, labour markets and the welfare state constitute core factors of the international competitive position of a society and of the living conditions of the population. These institutions also constitute the backbone of social stratification within a society. Accession to the EU thus raises a question about the implications of the new social order for social stratification and the living conditions in Eastern Europe. To answer this and related questions, it is necessary to come to a deeper understanding of the nature of the stratification processes, which are known to be shaped by countries’ institutional structures, primary among which are the education system, the labour market and the welfare state (Kerckhoff, 1996; Müller and Shavit, 1998; DiPrete, 2002).

While much progress has been made with respect to the comparative analysis of education systems and labour markets in Western industrialised countries, systematic descriptions and analyses of these institutions and related systems of welfare support in CEE countries are still lacking. Hence, the main goal of this handbook is to describe the education systems, labour markets and welfare states in the CEE countries and to provide a set of theory-driven, comprehensive and comparable indicators illustrating these institutions. In a nutshell, the handbook is intended to provide policy makers with the tools to assess the structural and institutional changes in CEE countries and scholars with a possibility to apply the proposed indicators to their analytic research.

Education, labour markets and welfare states in CEE countries: comparative focus

With the transition to capitalism, education qualifications have become the key resource determining individual labour market outcomes in CEE countries.