It is widely held that people who work have no difficulty in avoiding poverty and guaranteeing their family a decent standard of living. This idea has proved false, as many authors have shown that the ranks of the poor are filled with active people, sometimes even working full time. But,...

This paper compares poverty in the U.K. with 19 other countries. It is of particular interest because it uses the third wave of LIS data (early 1990 time period) and because it includes a number of of transitional economies as well as Taiwan. The main finding of this paper is that the overall...

This paper examines the level and distribution of equivalent after tax, after transfer money income in Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany and Sweden using micro-data from the Luxembourg Income Study from 1969/70 to 1994/95. It concentrates on inequality within and between birth cohorts. At any...

Children do not control their socio-economic situation; they benefit or suffer from their parents' situation. In north European countries major social transfer schemes, depending on the presence of dependent children, answer to multiple objectives (birth rate support, reduced inequality in the...

Comparative poverty research flourishes, especially since comparable income data are easily available through the Luxembourg Income Study. However, a number of methodological pitfalls in comparative poverty research are often overlooked. There is a vast amount of literature on sensitivity of...

Although highly-developed welfare states in the industrialized world spend a large share of their income on social security, poverty and social exclusion have not been eradicated. The persistence of income poverty in industrialized welfare states casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of...

Comparative research of poverty, income inequality and the effectiveness of income transfer systems has flourished during the last two decades, largely owing to the contribution of the Luxembourg Income Study project. So far, however, the majority of comparative analyses have been based on a...

Canada was very late in establishing a comprehensive retirement security system - lagging roughly thirty five years after the US built its Social Security system and about eighty years after Bismark first established a state funded pension system in Germany. As a consequence, the reduction in...

This paper examines the relationship between regional or 'contextual' poverty, income inequality and unemployment and individual political participation in the mid-1990s for the following Western European countries: Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. This...