A prime objective for welfare state activities is to take action to enhance population health and decrease mortality risks. Poverty has for several centuries been seen as a key social risk factor in these respects. Consequently, the fight against poverty has historically been at the forefront of...

A bottom-line of the interest in welfare state programs and cross-national variations in the pattern, size and structure of various social policies, is that we expect that the welfare state is an institution that greatly affects our lives and well-being. A further assumption is that this impact...

This paper uses data from the Luxembourg Income Study to analyse cross-national and cross-temporal poverty risks in eleven western countries. Our analyses are embedded in the tradition of welfare state research. Despite a hundred years of welfare state efforts, at the beginning of the 21st...