At risk of poverty indicators based on relative income measures suggest within the enlarged EU that societies located at quite different points on a continuum of affluence have similar levels of poverty. Substantial differences in levels of income between societies do not in themselves...

In this paper we take advantage of the recent availability of EU-SILC data to contribute to the recent debate relating to the Europeanisation of reference groups. Our analysis addresses both weak and strong versions of the thesis. The former proposes that common standards of what is an...

In this paper we address the question of the relative importance of within and between country differences in income and material deprivation in the European Union in the context of recent suggestions that insufficient attention has been paid to cross-national differences. In particular, we...