The forces of the market and systems competition bring about economic and social convergence in Europe. There is no need for social policies at the EU level. Social harmonisation would distort migration flows and slow down the speed of economic convergence. National welfare states will be...

Due to the worsening of economic crisis across European countries, the problem of poverty and the ways to tackle it returned at the centre of political and scientific debate. The level of poverty increased after the crisis, especially in Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece....

Policy over the past years has seen a gradual movement away from universal social benefits towards the provision of more targeted benefit schemes. Using the European tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD, this paper aims to compare the effectiveness of income-tested benefits at different...

This paper presents new information on activity-related eligibility criteria for unemployment and related benefits in OECD- and EU-countries in 2017, comparing the strictness of “demanding” elements built into unemployment benefits across countries and over time. Eligibility criteria for...

In-work benefits, often in the form of earned income tax credits (EITCs), have become increasingly popular over the last decades. Early versions of in-work benefits in the US, the UK and Ireland, primarily motivated as a poverty alleviation measure, have been followed by a large expansion of...

This paper aims to explore how housing allowances and mortgage interest tax relief have evolved in recent years, against the background of falling disposable incomes and rising housing costs. The analysis focuses on seven EU countries (Greece, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden and...

Scholarly literature is inconclusive on how economic crises impact on minimum income protection. Earlier studies found small increases in the generosity of safety nets at the onset of the crisis. Yet an increased focus on budget austerity substantially altered the social policy context. This...

The crisis has deepened pre-existing concerns regarding low-wage and non-standard employment. Countries where unemployment increased most strongly during the crisis period also saw part-time employment increasing, particularly involuntary part-time work. With involuntary part-time workers, as a...

This paper makes two contributions to the literature. First, by employing a macro-level institutional dataset on benefit levels for social assistance (SA) and minimum income protection (MIP) in 22 European countries in the period 1990–2013, I show that the adequacy of income support for...

We apply microsimulation techniques to estimate the first-order effects of tax-benefit policy changes since the beginning of the financial and economic crisis in 2008. Using the EU tax-benefit model EUROMOD in combination with the EU-SILC 2012 micro-data, we provide comparative estimates for...