The long-standing wisdom that universally designed benefits outperform targeted benefits in terms of poverty reduction has come under siege. Recent empirical studies tend to find that targeting is not necessarily associated anymore with lower levels of poverty reduction. In this study, we...

This article argues that the effect of policy institutions on female labor market participation is mediated by reference groups surrounding individual women. Using recent data on individual women between 20 and 49 years in 22 European countries, we distinguish between two types of institutions:...

Harmonisation of social security systems is back on the agenda of European policy makers. However, the introduction of a harmonised scheme poses severe challenges. In this article we explore some options and difficulties associated with the implementation of a harmonised minimum income...

Under the social investment paradigm, a child-centred investment strategy has been developed. Mainstay of such strategy is the provision of childcare services, which are expected to increase maternal employment rates, further children’s human capital and mitigate social inequalities in early...

Childcare services are increasingly regarded as a major policy lever to mitigate social inequalities. Such services are believed to be effective in reducing poverty and increasing employment rates by allowing both parents to engage in paid employment, as well as to benefit the cognitive and...

In the last decades, measures to reconcile work and family life arose in response to new societal needs stemming from the generalization of dual earnership. However, dual earnership has not been adopted evenly across various social groups in European societies. Consequently, concerns about the...

The main goal of this paper is to unravel the social distribution of childcare policies: who benefits from government investment on public childcare? If childcare policies are mainly used by those already working, and (scarce) budgetary resources thus end up with the higher income brackets,...

In this contribution, we discuss some of the new tensions that are emerging between the foundations of the welfare state. Several developments have led to the advent of the social investment state, in which people are to be activated and empowered instead of passively protected. We argue that...

Single mothers are vulnerable to living in poverty in contemporary European societies, which translates into economic dependency and threatens women’s capacity to form autonomous households. Given their difficulties to engage in paid employment in a context of increasing dual earnership, the...

Departing from growing concerns about in-work poverty and the proliferation of flexible employment, we investigate the association between temporary employment and poverty and the role of regulations in a European comparative perspective. In doing so, we focus specifically on possible gender...