According to the 'median-voter' hypothesis, greater inequality in the market distribution of earnings or income tends to produce greater generosity in redistributive policy. We outline the steps in the causal chain specified by the hypothesis and attempt to assess these steps empirically. Prior...

Using data from the mid-1990s from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we analyze for several household types the effect of mothers' work participation on families' relative income position and poverty risk. Results are compared across seven European countries with contrasting family policies:...

This paper examines gender differentials in the resources of households and individuals across seven welfare states. In its first part, it asks whether female-headed households can secure a living income without recourse to either the state or the income of a male partner. It then steps inside...

Great strides have been made in reducing poverty amongst the elderly in most rich countries over the past forty years. But pensioner poverty has not been eradicated, especially in the English-speaking nations. Poverty rates amongst older women are much higher than those for older men and much...

This paper focuses on cross-national differences in patterns of gender economic inequality, revealing their affinity to both welfare state policies and prevailing conceptions of gender equality. By mapping multiple aspects of inequality and assembling them into distinctive profiles, the paper...

This paper investigates wage gaps between part- and full-time women workers in six OECD countries in the mid-1990s. Using comparable micro-data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), for Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the US, the paper first assesses crossnational variation in the...

For a growing number of children in families headed by single mothers and in those headed by two adults with limited job skills, economic security now depends on mothers' earnings. The role that income transfers plays in reducing child poverty is well understood. Much less investigated is the...

Radical employment, household structure and stability transformations have created new tensions on the welfare state front, whose social programs were constructed in an era with a wholly different risk profile. Rowntree's poverty cycle clearly exemplifies the postwar picture of an exceptional...

Few works more than Esping-Andersen's 'Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism' have drawn researchers' attention on institutional features that characterize the diverse typologies of welfare regimes; yet the impact of the different institutional settings on income distribution has mostly been taken...