During the early post-war period, Western trade union movements grew in membership and achieved an institutionalized role in industrial relations and politics. However, during the last decades, many trade unions have seen their membership decline as they came increasingly under pressures due to...

Social services are a relatively new field of comparative welfare state research. Though comparative studies on the whole area of social services are still rare, good studies and data are available on services for elderly people and children. In almost all European countries services for the...

The paper focuses on the circumstances that explain lone mothers' dynamics of poverty in five different European settings (Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Sweden) using household panel data. My aim is to tackle the problem of poverty comparatively, dynamically, and with a gender...

This paper attempts to assess the labour market integration of ex-Yugoslav immigrants in two European countries - Austria and Sweden - in terms of the relevant structural characteristics of the two societies, i.e. immigration and citizenship policies, labour market structure and welfare regimes,...

Comparative research on family policies has primarily focused on governmental activities for the family. Public expenditures and single governmental measures have been at the core of current discussion, with a specific focus on their impact on particular social situations of families as well as...

During the last decades most industrialised countries have experienced a massive educational expansion. Corresponding to this development there has been an increase of female employment which is, however, to a large extent part-time. At the same time, the attempts of firms to achieve more...

In comparative family policy research there has been a growing need for comparative data and information on family policies in individual countries. Existing data sources are not sufficient, because they are too highly aggregated and do not focus on the family in specific terms. This has been...

The paper compares young adults' position in the '90s in three European welfare states: Finland, Sweden and Germany. Finland and Sweden, which represent the Nordic welfare state model, experienced deep recession at the beginning of the decade. This caused high youth unemployment and low labour...

Recent research on self-employment has emphasised the specific dynamic of the rise of female entrepreneurship. But self-employment is still predominated by men. Only about 25-30% of the self-employed are women and the female self-employment rate is often only half as high as the male...

The civil service in Europe has been undergoing profound changes since the 1980s. Two major developments are responsible for these changes: first, the high budget deficits of governments, and second, the demographic changes causing the share of pensioners to increase. These challenges have...