Welfare reform has increased labor force participation among welfare parents. But is work leading to self-sufficiency or another cycle of defeat for these workers? The answer is that most welfare workers remain trapped in the cage of poverty.The basic premise of the work-first model that...

More than half of U.S. states are working to establish programs what would automatically enrollment in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) workers who are not offered a retirement plan by their employer. These programs are designed to address a perceived shortfall of retirement saving,...

This paper assesses Italy’s 2019 tax and benefit reforms, analyses hypothetical reforms and proposes a reform package that balances goals of reducing poverty, encouraging employment and fiscal sustainability. Using the OECD’s Tax-Benefit and the EUROMOD microsimulation models, it shows that...

Welfare-to-work measures are a central theme of Israel’s labour and social policies to tackle relative poverty, which is concentrated among the Arab-Israeli and Ultra-orthodox (Haredi) communities. Policies include pilot programmes involving private-sector job placement (the “Wisconsin”...

The paper uses a large household dataset -- the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring survey -- to measure inequality and poverty in Russia since the start of transition in 1992. What emerges is that inequality had already emerged by 1992 and has grown subsequently. By 1996 the Gini for Russia was...

Minimum wage increases are not an effective mechanism for reducing poverty. And there is little causal evidence that they do so. Most workers who gain from minimum wage increases do not live in poor (or near-poor) families, while some who do live in poor families lose their job as a result of...

Public works programs in developing countries can reduce poverty in the long term and help lowskilled workers cope with economic shocks in the short term. But success depends on a scheme's design and implementation. Key design factors are: properly identifying the target population; selecting...

At the beginning of the 21st century, Bolivia presented improvements in the indicators of poverty and monetary inequality following the trend of Latin America. The analysis of the evolution of the Unsatisfied Basic Needs Index (NBI) also shows a positive trend. However, significant differences...

An increasing proportion of people towards the bottom of the UK's income distribution are in a household where someone is in paid work. Working households comprised 37% of those below the official poverty line in 1994-95 and 58% in 2017-18. Much of that increase is due to trends that seem...

'Pro-poor' tourism is arguably one of the best green options for addressing LDC poverty, employment and economic diversification initiatives. Although often neglected as a serious policy option - and consequently most of its potential still remains untapped - tourism is the leading export for at...