In this paper we propose an aggregate measure of income inequality for all founding countries of the European monetary union. Applying the methodology of the Theil index we are able to derive a measure for Euroland as a whole by exploiting information of two data sets, the European Community...

This study explores income changes in nine European countries. First, in order to rank the distributions of income, we apply dominance criteria. Then, we extend this standard approach and examine the differences between Lorenz and Generalized Lorenz curves by means of nonparametric methods. We...

This paper examines the effects of demographic structure on the evolution of inequality in Italy from 1977 to 1995, and on its inequality ranking relative to 11 of the other 14 European Union countries in the mid-1990s. The composition of Italian households was substantially different in 1995...

We analyze the impact of the state on the incidence of poverty in the working-age population of 14 advanced capitalist democracies between 1970 and 1997 using an unbalanced panel design. We utilize poverty measures based on micro-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study in conjunction with...

In this paper I assess the extent to which welfare states reduce poverty among single mothers and all mothers. I focus on two different typologies of welfare states. One identifies the gendered assumptions underlying social policies, while the other focuses on how welfare states and labor...

The belief that single motherhood is the pre-eminent cause of poverty in America has become a bipartisan cliché. The welfare reform enacted in 1996 was designed, among other things, to discourage single parenthood and to promote marriage. Yet a look at the experiences and policies of other...

Strong family networks in Southern Europe are often credited with protecting people from poverty in circumstances where both employment and social benefits are limited. However it may well be that the economies frequently described as 'familial' are more strongly patriarchal than other market...

Using the notion of the poverty regime as a heuristic device, this paper examines the safety nets of several members of the European Union and three candidate countries: Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic,...

This paper analyses the distributive impacts of various regulatory and institutional settings of European schemes of social assistance. For this purpose, two sets of classifications of European schemes of social assistance are introduced that classify the systems according to regulatory...