The Hartz IV labour market reform in 2005 triggered a substantial reduction in unemployment in Germany. At the same time, it reduced social welfare for the long-term unemployed and increased uncertainty for the employed. The proposed reform by the new government ("Bürgergeld") will adjust the...

The authors discuss the reform of basic security in the direction of a "citizen's income" in the coalition agreement of the new "traffic light coalition" at the federal level against the background of fundamental considerations on the future of the welfare state, including those from the...

This article introduces fiscal impoverishment as a novel framework for comparative poverty research. We invert standard analyses of welfare state policy and household poverty by focusing not on poverty alleviation but poverty creation and exacerbation. Using harmonized household survey data, we...

This article attempts to identify social investment strategies across EU countries and explain their evolution over the period 2004-18, by using cluster analysis on expenditure and coverage variables and qualitative analysis on selected policy areas to contextualize the results. It finds that...