After 16 years of conservative-liberal rule, a social democratic-green coalition cameinto office in 1998. Though having declared the successful combating of unemploymentthe principal yardstick for his government’s performance, Chancellor Schröder actuallystood back until mid-2001, expecting...

This study focuses on productive activities that are legal in principlebut which are not declared to the authorities. In the debate inGermany various terms are used to describe these activities, themost common being Schwarzarbeit (clandestine employment),Schattenwirtschaft (underground economy)...

The extent of low-wage work in Germany is hotly debated. In international comparisons fromthe mid-90s, Germany is often classified as a country with a low wage dispersion. Comparedto the USA and UK, Germany has a relatively equal income structure and a small proportionof low-paid workers (OECD 1996;...

The European Council held in Lisbon in March 2000 was a turning point of the evolution ofEuropean employment policies. The ‘Open Method of Coordination’ (OMC) comes into forcewithin the framework of the European Strategy for employment. This method will justify thechoice and the implementation...

This paper is motivated by the lack of any obvious relationship betweenaggregate poverty and unemployment in Great Britain. We derive aframework based on individuals’ risks of unemployment and poverty,and how these vary over the economic cycle. Analysing the BritishHousehold Panel Survey for...

We examine whether unemployment early in an individual’scareer influences her later employment prospects. We use six yearsof the LFS to create pseudo-cohorts and exploit cross-cohortvariation in unemployment at school-leaving age to identify this.We find heterogeneous responses: for the...

Poverty Street draws on evidence from twelve of the most disadvantagedneighbourhoods in England and Wales, using Census data from 1971, localadministrative data from 1998 onwards, and over 400 interviews conducted in 1999 and2001.The neighbourhoods have multiple problems - unemployment three...

Given the emphasis in recent welfare economics, political philosophy andsocial policy on the concept of opportunity, the need to find a way ofdifferentiating between outcomes that are the result of choice and outcomesthat are the results of constraint has become pressing. But all approaches...

As unemployment falls it is often the most disadvantaged unemployed whoget left behind. To identify what works to improve the job prospects of thisgroup, Helen Evans has looked at Bootstrap Enterprises in Hackney, anexample of a community-based employment project working for 22 years withthis...

Using data from cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys, Kathleen Kiernanand Ganka Mueller have examined two questions: What does the currentlydivorced population look like; and what sort of people are likely to divorce(including breakdown of cohabitation)?The currently divorced are more likely...