Why is it that, in almost three decades and despite growth of income, employment and high levels of social spending, even the most developed welfare states in the world failed to improve minimum income protection for families with children? To what extent the erosion of minimum income protection...

Why is it that, in almost three decades and despite growth of income, employment and high levels of social spending, even the most developed welfare states in the world failed to improve minimum income protection for families with children? To what extent the erosion of minimum income protection...

The present paper argues that we are witnessing an increase of the tensions between the three main goals of social security systems (poverty alleviation, securing living standards and prevention) and that, as a consequence, the poverty-reducing capacity of social transfers has come under...

Currently, the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is the single most important data source for cross-national comparative research on income and living conditions in the European Union. As EU-SILC consists of a sample of European households, point estimates...

In European poverty research, poverty is usually measured with a poverty line defined as a percentage of the national median income. However, for grasping trends in social cohesion in the European Union (EU), and identifying options and pitfalls for social policy initiatives at the EU level,...

The enlargement of the EU has stirred discussion about the relevance of the traditional EU poverty indicator. This indicator measures poverty in relative and national terms. As a result, the poor in the least wealthy EU member states have very different living conditions from those in more...

After the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, on the eve of the elaboration of policies designed to help reach the Europe 2020 target of lifting 20 million people out of poverty, it is important to take stock of the outcomes of the Lisbon agenda for growth, employment and...

Over half way into the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, on the eve of the elaboration of policies designed to help reach the Europe 2020 target of lifting 20 million people out of poverty, it is important to take stock of the outcomes of the Lisbon agenda for growth,...

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...

Should we explain the disappointing outcomes of the Open Method of Co-ordination on Inclusion by methodological weaknesses or by substantive contradictions in the “social investment” paradigm? To clarify the underlying concepts, we first revisit the original “Lisbon inspiration”, and...