Empirical analyses of economic inequality, poverty, and mobility in Germany are, to an increas-ing extent, using … analysis in support of the European Commission's stated objective of fighting poverty and reducing social inequality through … considerable impact on the degree and structure of inequality and poverty (see Hauser 2008, Causa et al. 2009, Nolan et al. 2009 …

How should relative poverty be defined and measured in a European Union where there are substantial variations in … suggests that Europe-wide comparisons are more important to the perception of poverty than the convention of national relative … poverty lines would have led us to expect. Even relative poverty is more prevalent in the new low-income (eastern) countries …