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...

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,...

This paper analyses the distributive impacts of various regulatory and institutional settings of European schemes of social assistance. For this purpose, two sets of classifications of European schemes of social assistance are introduced that classify the systems according to regulatory...

This paper aims at examining the impact of different transfers on the income distribution in European countries. Therefore an empirical analysis using generalized Lorenz curve comparisons is carried out. The obtained results are investigated by relating them to a classification of European...

Die Europäische Union vollzieht derzeit eine der größten Reformen der letzten Jahre, die vielerorts als alternativlos beschrieben wird. Charles B. Blankart und Erik R. Fasten, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, treten dem entgegen und entwickeln eine durchsetzbare Alternative zum...

Using data from the ECB's Survey of Professional Forecasters, we investigate the reporting practices of survey participants by comparing their point predictions and the mean/median/mode of their probability forecasts. We find that the individual point predictions, on average, tend to be biased...