Focusing on an array of European and North American welfare states between 1985 and 2005, we consider how welfare state policies are related to households' relative incomes, taking into account cross-national and temporal differences in income distributions. At the same time, we consider how two...

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...

The problem of statistical inference has long been associated with quantitative inequality research. Within the last five years, however, significant developments have occurred in both the theory and practice of conducting formal statistical inference with common measures of inequality such as...