This chapter compares Canadian policies for families with children under the age of three with policies available in eight other affluent countries (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and the US), three from each of Esping-Andersen's 'three worlds' of welfare capitalism....

This paper updates and extends my earlier work (published in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Economic Issues on how the middle class fares throughout the world. Wave #6 data from the Luxembourg Income Study, recently released and centered around 2004, provides an opportunity to assess what...

Mothers' employment and earnings partly depend on social policies and cultural norms supporting work-family balance. While policies regarding parental leave and childcare may assist families in combining work and care, are these policies related to the economic penalties for motherhood? Using...

The objective of this paper is to distinguish between different types of working poverty, on the basis of the mechanisms that produce it. Whereas the poverty literature identifies a myriad of risk factors and of categories of disadvantaged workers, we focus on three immediate causes of working...

This paper examines to what extent family policies have affected earnings inequality within and between coupled households. Previous studies had found cross-country variation in the degree to which women's earnings attenuate earnings inequality between households. In this paper we explain this...

While the 2008 global economic crisis is over and many countries are into a recovery phase, the impacts continue to linger. Analysis of its aftermath offers insight into how economic shocks reverberate through modern economies to affect the lives of children and families and how governments...