This paper examines whether retirement-income systems allow older individuals to enjoy socially acceptable income levels independent of paid work (decommodification) and the family (defamilialization). Little research has investigated the degree to which decommodification and defamilialization...

The aim is to assess the prevalence of poverty among families receiving social assistance. We will examine the incidence of poverty among the recipients in relation to the general poverty profile. To answer these questions, the adequacy and poverty reduction effectiveness of social assistance...

Great strides have been made in reducing poverty amongst the elderly in most rich countries over the past forty years. But pensioner poverty has not been eradicated, especially in the English-speaking nations. Poverty rates amongst older women are much higher than those for older men and much...

This study explores the plausibility of extending research on income inequality to incorporate relative living standards based on household head's industry of employment. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study is used to assess the relative level and movement of per capita disposable household...

One of the most frequently expressed concerns about the unprecedented economic boom that Ireland experienced in the second half of the 1990s has been that the benefits were not shared evenly, that rising living standards were accompanied by widening gaps leaving Ireland with a particularly...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to analyze the relationship between the distribution of household income and the distribution of working time in six European countries and in the United States. The second objective is to assess how the tax and transfer systems affect the gender...

In this paper we use microdata on employment and earnings from a variety of industrialized countries to investigate the family gap in pay - the differential in hourly wages between women with children and women without children. We present results from seven countries: Australia, Canada, the...

In an age when there is considerable focus on the needs and rights of children, it is perhaps a little surprising that parental income still mostly determines the standard of living that children enjoy. This has important implications, not just in terms of overall levels of welfare for children,...

The goal of this study is to look at different countries, study their redistribution policies and discuss the effects of the redistribution/incentives tradeoff. Since we want to look at countries that display different degrees of government intervention, we pick countries belonging to both...

Current debates on the welfare state entail two intertwined questions. First, does a nation have sufficient active labor force participation to maintain the benefits for non-participants? Second, do social provisions exacerbate or attenuate class, ethnic and other distinctions within society? As...