US poverty is much higher than poverty in Europe when a relative poverty measure is used. Using an absolute poverty measurement method, the picture looks different: poverty in some European countries is higher. This paper estimates poverty rates for all the countries of the (old) EU and the USA...

The increasing availability of rich (panel) data provides many opportunities to test theories on consumption smoothing behaviour. At the same time, the informational requirements in terms of data and modelling are high and very context specific, thus requiring a filtering of essential...

Child poverty can be measured using approaches that aim to make cross-country comparisons on a regional or global scale or to capture a country’s specific poverty context. The first can be referred to as a global approach and the second as a country-specific approach. These underlying...

This paper argues that although current public pension schemes may shift the major financial burden to future generations, private and public transfers of wealth across generations offset this development. As a result the financing of existing social security and pension arrangements seems to...