At the European level and in most EU member states, higher employment levels are seen as key to better poverty outcomes. But what can we expect the actual impact to be? Up until now shift-share analysis has been used to estimate the impact of rising employment on relative income poverty. This...

There is a long-standing controversy over the question of whether targeting social transfers towards the bottom part of the income distribution actually enhances or weakens their redistributive impact. Korpi and Palme have influentially claimed that "the more we target benefits at the poor, the...

Recent studies find in-work poverty to be a pan-European phenomenon. Yet in-work poverty has come to the fore as a policy issue only recently in most continental European countries. Policies implemented in the United States and the United Kingdom, most notably in-work benefit schemes, are much...

This paper asks what governments in the EU Member States and some US states are doing to support workers on low wages. Using model family simulations, we assess the policy measures currently in place to guarantee an adequate disposable income to working families, taking into account minimum...

Proponents of a basic income (BI) claim that it could bring significant reductions in financial poverty, on top of many other benefits, including greatly reduced administrative complexity and cost. Using microsimulation analysis in a comparative two-country setting, we show that the potential...

Basic income advocates see a universal income grant, no questions asked, as bringing many potential benefits, not in the least as an ironclad protection against poverty, if set high enough. It is hard to know with any certainty what a world with a sizeable basic income would look like but we can...

Imputed rental income of homeowners is tax exempt in most countries, despite the long-standing arguments recommending its inclusion in the tax base, on both equity and efficiency grounds. The current fiscal crisis revived interest towards this form of taxation. The paper investigates the fiscal...

The present economic crisis comes against the background of decades of policy changes that have generally weakened the capacity of social safety nets to offer citizens with adequate resources for financial survival when labour markets fail to do so. Building on data for 24 European Union...

Governments across the EU have been striving to get more people into work while at the same time acknowledging that more needs to be done to 'make work pay'. Yet this drive comes at a time when structural economic shifts are putting pressure on wages, especially of less skilled workers. This...

This paper is prepared as a chapter for the Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2 (edited by A. B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon, Elsevier-North Holland, forthcoming). Like the other chapters in the volume (and its predecessor), the aim is to provide a comprehensive review of a particular area...