The EU and minimum income protection: clarifying the policy conundrum. Should the EU be involved in the governance of minimum income protection, and if it should, in which role precisely? This question raises a complex policy conundrum. We focus on a proposal by the European Anti-Poverty Network...

This working paper aims at describing the content, methodology, strengths and weaknesses of the CSB-Minimum Income Protection Indicators dataset (CSB-MIPI). The CSB-MIPI dataset provides data on the three main pillars of minimum income protection (minimum wages, social assistance for working age...

The present paper argues that we are witnessing an increase of the tensions between the three main goals of social security systems (poverty alleviation, securing living standards and prevention) and that, as a consequence, the poverty-reducing capacity of social transfers has come under...

This working paper explores how the poverty reduction capacity of social security evolved in the ‘booming’ years leading up to the current economic crisis. The question to arise is whether and, if so, why social protection provides an explanation for, on the one hand, disappointing poverty...

Poverty reduction rests on the mechanisms of horizontal and vertical solidarity and on prevention and repair of social risks. In this contribution, we argue that in contemporary welfare states the poverty-reducing capacity of existing social security systems perceive inherent limitations....

Why is it that, in almost three decades and despite growth of income, employment and high levels of social spending, even the most developed welfare states in the world failed to improve minimum income protection for families with children? To what extent the erosion of minimum income protection...

Why is it that, in almost three decades and despite growth of income, employment and high levels of social spending, even the most developed welfare states in the world failed to improve minimum income protection for families with children? To what extent the erosion of minimum income protection...

This paper aims to contribute to the debate on whether or not European welfare states converge by assessing trends and patterns of convergence and divergence of European minimum income schemes in the period 1992/2001-2012. We expand on previous studies on convergence of social assistance schemes...

This paper assesses the current variation in activation strategies directed towards able-bodied persons of working age who rely on a minimum income guarantee in 20 EU Member states. First, we argue that the Active Inclusion notion developed by the European Commission in its 2008 Recommendation...

The long-standing wisdom that universally designed benefits outperform targeted benefits in terms of poverty reduction has come under siege. Recent empirical studies tend to find that targeting is not necessarily associated anymore with lower levels of poverty reduction. In this study, we...