This report presents an empirical typology of pension regimes in the European Union, the US, Canada, Australia and Norway. The categorisation is based on 34 quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the mandatory parts of the pension systems in these countries. The empirical analysis shows...

Combating social exclusion is one of the key objectives of pension systems. This report focuses on social exclusion among the elderly (defined as the 55 age group) in the EU’s member states. Social exclusion has been conceptualised as a state of individuals in relation to four dimensions. Two...

This paper examines the well-known classification of welfare regimes by Esping- Andersen (1990). First, the institutional characteristics of eleven welfare states are examined by means of a principal components analysis. This analysis confirms the existence of three types of welfare state, viz....

The standard poverty lines applied in empirical research tend to be problematic in terms of validity, reliability, ease of application or socio-political credibility. This paper introduces an international version of an alternative method, which originally has been developed for the Netherlands....