Substantial cross-national differences in poverty alleviation are well documented, but theextent to which different parts of the social transfer system account for this variation is still relatively unexamined. This study analyses the redistributive effects of specific social policy institutions...

A standard analysis of the anti-poverty effect of taxes and income transfers is to compare pre-tax-transfer poverty and post-tax-transfer poverty. A critical shortcoming of the standard approach is that it treats pre-tax-transfer poverty as given and ignores potential effects of taxes and...

This paper addresses the question of the institutional flexibility of three major European welfare states. Using Data from the second and fifth wave of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we measure first how effectively the German, British and Italian welfare state have responded changes in...

This paper examines the well-known classification of welfare regimes by Esping- Andersen (1990). First, the institutional characteristics of eleven welfare states are examined by means of a principal components analysis. This analysis confirms the existence of three types of welfare state, viz....

Despite the considerable influence of Esping-Andersen's categorization of three 'worlds' of welfare capitalism, researchers have largely neglected investigation of his dimensions of welfare state policy and politics. Building on and extending the foundations provided by Esping-Andersen, we...

In the Western countries poverty has increased along with the resurgence of low-income targeting and the increased conditionality of social assistance. This paper provides new evidence on the relationship between social minimums and income adequacy by examining the extent to which social...

Welfare state supporters typically contend that social-welfare programs boost the incomes of low-earning households. Critics argue that, over time, such programs reduce the growth of economic output and/or employment. As a result, redistribution may produce stagnant or even declining real...

This paper aims at examining the impact of different transfers on the income distribution in European countries. Therefore an empirical analysis using generalized Lorenz curve comparisons is carried out. The obtained results are investigated by relating them to a classification of European...

Our study analyzes how political context, embodied by the welfare state and Leftist political actors, shapes individual poverty. Using the Luxembourg Income Study, we conduct a multilevel analysis of working-aged adult poverty across 18 affluent Western democracies. Our index of welfare...

Empirical studies on income distribution and poverty have indicated that the public transfer system has been successful in terms of poverty and inequality reduction in welfare states. However, very little attention has been paid to private transfers in this analysis. Recently, while there has...