Reference budgets could play an important role in the work of measuring poverty and assessing income adequacy, and in the process of monitoring social inclusion policies in the European Union. As the reference budgets that are already constructed in some European countries are all developed...

This paper considers the measurement of poverty in the European Union (EU). Starting from a definition of poverty that is suitable for the European context, a flexible measurement framework is proposed based on the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke class of poverty measures. Three key issues need to be...

In the microsimulation literature, it is still uncommon to test the statistical significance of results. In this note we argue that this situation is both undesirable and unnecessary. Provided the parameters used in the microsimulation are exogenous, as is often the case in static...

Why is it that, in almost three decades and despite growth of income, employment and high levels of social spending, even the most developed welfare states in the world failed to improve minimum income protection for families with children? To what extent the erosion of minimum income protection...

The present paper argues that we are witnessing an increase of the tensions between the three main goals of social security systems (poverty alleviation, securing living standards and prevention) and that, as a consequence, the poverty-reducing capacity of social transfers has come under...

Part-time work has structurally increased across Europe. The recent crisis period has brought additional increases in many countries, especially in involuntary part-time employment. This paper considers the link between part-time work and poverty, taking a comparative perspective across the...