The purpose of this paper is twofold. The primary purpose is to try and explain both the temporal and the spatial variation of poverty rates in terms of unemployment insurance indicators and structural/sociodemographic factors. Secondly, the paper aims to test the 'convergence hypothesis' of the...

Most comparative welfare state research use data on panels of countries in order to increase the number of observations. Although such data contain variation in two dimensions, temporal and spatial, the former of these tends to be ignored. The purpose of this article is to try and explain both...