While the 2008 global economic crisis is over and many countries are into a recovery phase, the impacts continue to linger. Analysis of its aftermath offers insight into how economic shocks reverberate through modern economies to affect the lives of children and families and how governments...

This paper analyses major pension system regulation in four European countries: Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It is focused on the government's and social partner's efforts to provide old-age security benefits, and how these regulatory approaches have shaped the current...

Most welfare states design their tax/benefit system to combat income poverty. Some countries are more effective in poverty alleviation than others. What can explain these variations in outcomes and effectiveness? And has the redistributive power of different social programs changed over time and...

Prominent research has claimed that work-family reconciliation policies trigger "tradeoffs" and "paradoxes" in terms of gender equality with adverse labor market consequences for women. These claims have greatly influenced debates regarding social policy, work, family, and gender inequality....

Korpi and Palme's (1998) classic "The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality" claims that universal social policy better reduces poverty than social policies targeted at the poor. This article revisits Korpi and Palme's classic, and in the process, explores and informs a set of...

This paper addresses the question of the institutional flexibility of three major European welfare states. Using Data from the second and fifth wave of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we measure first how effectively the German, British and Italian welfare state have responded changes in...

This paper provides an overview of different approaches to old age security and their societal outcome in three advanced welfare states: Denmark, Finland, and the United Kingdom. All three countries established a public first tier minimum pension, which was also pursued in the following. Reform...

Welfare states influence the social structure of societies as well as inequalities in various ways. The paper presented here discusses whether specific structures of inequality can be identified in different welfare regimes, i.e. whether specific population groups (elderly, unemployed, single...