The current unemployment insurance and employment protection legislation were set up in an economic environment in which relationships between workers and firms were typically long-lasting and stable. The increasing globalisation of the economy and the rapid technological and organisational...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social protection systems in Europe and the US to provide (income) insurance against macro level shocks in terms of automatic stabilizers. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38% of a proportional income shock and 47% of an idiosyncratic...

With a view to better assessment of the roles played by social security and social policy in determining well-being, this presentation introduces the 'decommodified security ratio' (DSR), an instrument for evaluating an important duty of the social State, namely to maintain and improve people's...

Aims: We analyzed the redistributive outcomes for sickness benefits using a typology of social insurance institutions compared to external factors for sickness risk. Material: Unbalanced panel data of the Luxembourg Income Study on household earnings, sickness benefits and labour force...

The standard poverty lines applied in empirical research tend to be problematic in terms of validity, reliability, ease of application or socio-political credibility. This paper introduces an international version of an alternative method, which originally has been developed for the Netherlands....

This paper has four main objectives: (1) to monitor the rise of poverty and income inequality during the first decade of Russian transition; (2) to analyze the performance of the welfare state in reducing poverty and income inequality; (3) to identify the most vulnerable groups of transition;...

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the change in the household structure following the birthrate decline and the aging population and the economic well-being among the elderly. This study consists of three major parts. In the first part, the change in economic...

Social Security is a major retirement income source for older persons in the United States and other developed countries. Without Social Security income, a large portion of the older population would live in poverty in all developed countries. This report analyzes how or to what extent Social...

This paper examines the impact of idiosyncratic income shocks on household consumption, educational expenditure and fertility in Indonesia, and assesses whether the investment in human capital of children and fertility are used to smooth household consumption. Using six different kinds of...