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...

Estimates of average per capita consumption and income from national accounts differ substantially from corresponding measures of consumption and income from household surveys. Using a new compilation of more than 2,000 household surveys matched to national accounts data, we find that the gaps...

Despite a rich literature studying the impact of inequality on policy outcomes, there has been limited effort to bring these insights into the debates about comparative support for government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We fill in this gap by analyzing rich survey data from six countries...

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought havocs on economies around the world. Yet, much needs to be learnt on the distributional impacts of the pandemic. We contribute new theoretical and empirical evidence on the distributional impacts of the pandemic on different income groups in a multi-country...

Various challenges are thought to render female-headed households (FHHs) vulnerable to poverty in the Arab region. Yet, previous studies have mixed results and the absence of household panel survey data hinders analysis of poverty dynamics. We address these challenges by proposing a novel...

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,...