This paper explores the influence of government employment on the gender gap in earnings in seven countries, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The size of the public sector and women's concentration in government employment varies widely across industrialized countries. We...

This paper uses microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) to estimate and compare four dimensions of the well-being of the aged in Taiwan and eight other countries - the United States, Japan, Australia, Poland, Finland, Germany, Hungary and Canada. Together, these nine countries cover a...

This article starts by discussing the two (semi-collective) layers of the pension system in the Netherlands separately. Then, the Belgian pension system will be discussed. Apart from the cost of the pension system (which will only be discussed very briefly), comparison of the pension systems...

The paper compares poverty in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and France. We answer whether it is justifiable to talk about a unified Nordic model in terms of poverty and poverty alleviation. We have (1) descriptive/analytical and (2) methodological goals. (1) We pool the four Nordic countries...

For a growing number of children in families headed by single mothers and in those headed by two adults with limited job skills, economic security now depends on mothers' earnings. The role that income transfers plays in reducing child poverty is well understood. Much less investigated is the...

In all societies people seek shelter against such risk where their livelihood is for some reason endangered. Childhood, sickness, accidents, and old age are classical examples of social risks that a society somehow must encounter. A society that does not take care of its vulnerable members is...

This chapter presents a cross-national portrait of gender equality in the labor market in the early 1990s, based on Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data from fifteen countries. Cross-country comparisons are analyzed in the context of variation both across, and within, the three welfare state...

The increase in dispersion of personal earnings in the USA has received considerable attention and has been analyzed extensively. The evidence for other countries is less systematic. There are a few comparative studies, but they tend to focus on descriptions of the overall distribution of income...

A bottom-line of the interest in welfare state programs and cross-national variations in the pattern, size and structure of various social policies, is that we expect that the welfare state is an institution that greatly affects our lives and well-being. A further assumption is that this impact...

In this paper we use cross-national comparisons made possible by the LIS to examine America's experience in maintaining a low poverty rate. We compare the effectiveness of United States antipoverty policies to that of similar polices elsewhere in the industrialized world. If lessons can be...