The aging of populations and hampering economic growth increase pressure on public finances in many advanced capitalist societies. Consequently, governments have adopted pension reforms in order to relieve pressure on public finances. These reforms have contributed to a relative shift from...

Convergence of social protection objectives and policies in member states is an explicit objective of the EU. Earlier research has shown that there has indeed been a tendency of convergence of social protection levels over the last decades. However, comparative studies frequently use indicators...

Polarization is an interesting additional social indicator for analyzing income inequality and poverty across countries, as it captures the phenomenon of ‘clustering around extreme poles'. Rising income polarization can be harmful since it is closely linked to poverty, social exclusion, social...

Prior studies have suggested that higher public pensions are associated with lower income inequality among the elderly, whereas the reverse is true for private pensions. Van Vliet et al. (2012) empirically test whether relative shifts from public to private pension schemes entail higher levels...