This study explores income changes in nine European countries. First, in order to rank the distributions of income, we apply dominance criteria. Then, we extend this standard approach and examine the differences between Lorenz and Generalized Lorenz curves by means of nonparametric methods. We...

This paper examines the effects of demographic structure on the evolution of inequality in Italy from 1977 to 1995, and on its inequality ranking relative to 11 of the other 14 European Union countries in the mid-1990s. The composition of Italian households was substantially different in 1995...

This paper presents stylized facts about the effect of children on household disposable income and its components (the 'income package') in nine OECD countries, employing data from the Luxembourg Income Study database. We find that cross-national differences in the impact of children on...

We analyze the impact of the state on the incidence of poverty in the working-age population of 14 advanced capitalist democracies between 1970 and 1997 using an unbalanced panel design. We utilize poverty measures based on micro-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study in conjunction with...

In this paper I assess the extent to which welfare states reduce poverty among single mothers and all mothers. I focus on two different typologies of welfare states. One identifies the gendered assumptions underlying social policies, while the other focuses on how welfare states and labor...

EU-TE trade is increasingly characterized by intra-industry trade. For some countries (Czech Republic), the share of intra-industry trade in total trade with the EU approaches 60 percent. The decomposition of intra-industry trade into horizontal and vertical shares reveals overwhelming vertical...

The belief that single motherhood is the pre-eminent cause of poverty in America has become a bipartisan cliché. The welfare reform enacted in 1996 was designed, among other things, to discourage single parenthood and to promote marriage. Yet a look at the experiences and policies of other...

Strong family networks in Southern Europe are often credited with protecting people from poverty in circumstances where both employment and social benefits are limited. However it may well be that the economies frequently described as 'familial' are more strongly patriarchal than other market...

The Lisbon summit of the European Council in March 2000 declared the number of people living in poverty and social exclusion in the European Union to be unacceptable, and called for steps to tackle the issue, beginning with the setting of targets for particular indicators. The targets suggested...

Using the notion of the poverty regime as a heuristic device, this paper examines the safety nets of several members of the European Union and three candidate countries: Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic,...