Monitoring social inclusion in Europe : 2017 edition

The EU has not made any progress towards achieving its 'Europe 2020' social inclusion target, adopted in 2010, of lifting at least 20 million people from poverty and social exclusion by 2020. This book aims to contribute to our understanding of some of the substantive challenges facing 'Social Europe' and to the development of methods that can bring about new insights into issues related to income, deprivation and work. The data on individuals and their households contained in the 'EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions' (EU-SILC) are used to contrast the experience of European countries, drawing out lessons of potential value to all. The strengths and weaknesses of cross-sectional and longitudinal EU-SILC data are also examined, and recommendations for their further improvement are made - in relation to both data production and data analysis. Therefore, this volume is intended not only for policy-makers and statisticians but also for all those concerned about the impact of economic, employment and social policies on people's lives and about the ways in which the social dimension of Europe - including the monitoring of the EU social inclusion target - could be strengthened.