In the Western countries poverty has increased along with the resurgence of low-income targeting and the increased conditionality of social assistance. This paper provides new evidence on the relationship between social minimums and income adequacy by examining the extent to which social...

This study assesses if structural theory explains the variation in poverty across rich Western democracies. With unbalanced panel analysis of 18 countries, two poverty measures and controlling for the welfare state and economic performance, I examine five structural factors: manufacturing...

We draw on LIS' various resources to sketch a portrait of child poverty in upper-income countries. We first summarize past LIS-based scholarship on child poverty, highlighting studies that seek to explain cross-national variation in child poverty levels. Our empirical sections focus on child...

This study investigates the relationship between the welfare state and poverty with multiple measures of the welfare state and poverty in an unbalanced panel of 18 Western nations from 1967 to 1997. While addressing the limitations of past research, the analysis shows that social security...

Whenever a country experiences an increase in its mean income, inequality roars its ugly head and the net outcome in terms of poverty remains ambiguous. Kakwani (2000) proposes an instrument that allows quantifying this inequality-growth tradeoff. This paper applies that methodology to 28...

Social Security is a major retirement income source for older persons in the United States and other developed countries. Without Social Security income, a large portion of the older population would live in poverty in all developed countries. This report analyzes how or to what extent Social...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The primary purpose is to try and explain both the temporal and the spatial variation of poverty rates in terms of unemployment insurance indicators and structural/sociodemographic factors. Secondly, the paper aims to test the 'convergence hypothesis' of the...

Analyzes wives' labor force participation, wives' earnings, and the distribution of household income in eleven LIS countries and, for four countries, across time. The authors use the squared coefficient of variation to measure the mitigating effect of wives' earnings on inequality.

Examines gender differences in poverty in eight industrialized countries: US, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands. Results suggest that gender differences in human capital factors and family factors, as well as religion, culture, and policy, all play a role in...

This article builds on other reviews of changes in earnings inequality in the U.S. in tow important directions. First, the review is expanded to include other major industrialized countries, and second, the focus is broadened from earnings to household income. The general finding is that the...