In the microsimulation literature, it is still uncommon to test the statistical significance of results. In this paper 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...

In the social policy debate, fundamentally different ideas prevail about the interlinkages between such key variables as employment, low pay, social transfers and poverty. This paper presents basic empirical evidence on the validity of these ideas and the policy prescriptions that follow from...

In the EU there is growing concern about poverty among children, and among families with children. In most OECD countries, income poverty among children now exceeds that among the elderly, who traditionally were the demographic group most at risk of poverty (Jäntti and Danziger, 2000). However,...

How can poverty reduction be improved and at what cost? Available evidence suggests that social investment strategies and employment policies are important but not sufficient. In order to reduce the number of people below the relative at-risk-of-poverty threshold of the EU, countries must...

Based on identically specified human capital earnings functions of the Mincer-type, this paper reports estimates of the rates of return to human capital for full-time working male employees in twelve countries. The results are compared across countries and over time of the decade of the eighties.

This article starts by discussing the two (semi-collective) layers of the pension system in the Netherlands separately. Then, the Belgian pension system will be discussed. Apart from the cost of the pension system (which will only be discussed very briefly), comparison of the pension systems...

The pool of early retirees is characterized by a large heterogeneity along several criteria. The present paper focuses on the key distinction between those in forced early retirement and those who retire early by individual choice. We start by estimating a retirement probit model for older...

The present paper analyzes the budgetary impact of various Social Security reforms in the Belgian institutional setting. Our approach relies on parameters that were derived in Dellis et alii (2002) using a micro-modeling strategy. Focusing our attention on a hypothetical age cohort, we...

This paper investigates trends in financial poverty in OECD countries by asking the following questions: 1) Have overall levels of poverty increased, decreased or remained stable? 2) Has the incidence of poverty shifted from certain demographic groups to others? 3) How has the social income...