Development of the social dimension of Europe was advanced by the Lisbon Summit in March 2000, and this paper considers the future direction of social policy. The first step towards a social agenda could take the form of benchmarking, based on national competencies in this field, with Member...

We compare the distributional effects of austerity measures that have been introduced in 6 EU countries in the period of large government budget deficits following the 2007-8 financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn. We explore the effects of policy changes presented as austerity...

Anecdotal evidence permeates accounts on the impact of the global economic crisis (GEC) on Philippine poverty. This study systematically assesses the evidence and recent data. It adopts a somewhat eclectic approach, applying regression and decomposition techniques to trace the GEC impact on GDP...

The official poverty data fall short of properly informing public policy and governance concerning the progress, or lack of it, in achieving the country's commitment of halving, between 1990 and 2015, the incidence of poverty and hunger. Imposing consistency in poverty estimation shows that the...

There has been a growing conversation about the revival of Manufacturing to push back growing inequality and reduce poverty. We discuss the pathways by which a higher share of the Manufacturing sector in GDP may bring about lower poverty incidence while a higher share of Services may have the...

Using two-step system-GMM on a panel data of 105 economies over the period 1987-2016, we present formal statistical evidence that Federalism is a strong predictor of greater income inequality in developing economies. It is also a strong predictor of higher poverty incidence and poverty severity...

This paper considers the distributional consequences of the reform programme in Russia. Although a small fraction of the population have gained under the reforms, average real household per capita income has declined significantly with households at the lower end of the income distribution...

Numerous authors have pointed out the importance of taking into consideration the intra-household distribution of resources in the analysis of poverty. Most empirical studies of poverty, however, assume an equal sharing of resources between all household members. There is a growing body of...

We study an innovative welfare program in Chile which combines a period of frequent home visits to households in extreme poverty, with guaranteed access to social services. Program impacts are identified using a regression discontinuity design, exploring the fact that program eligibility is a...

We document key facts about marriage and divorce, comparing trends through the past 150 years and outcomes across demographic groups and countries. While divorce rates have risen over the past 150 years, they have been falling for the past quarter century. Marriage rates have also been falling,...