The most concrete characteristic of a recession is that demand disappears for some of the commodities produced by workers and unwanted unemployment is imposed on a large segment of the labor force. With growing job losses in the current recession it is important to know, whose boat falls when...

The nation's best known welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was created to give widows and destitute mothers the means to stay at home and care for children. However, the entry of large numbers of American mothers into the paid workforce has created increasing tension...

This 2002 strategic planning paper was prepared under contract for Human Resources Development Canada, a federal government department with a broad mandate for income security, social and labour market policies and programs. While the historical analysis of the paper is now dated, the main...

This paper examines the impacts of international remittances on child labor and household welfare by presenting evidence from Turkey. Remittances by alleviating resource constraints may improve household welfare and help reduce labor supply of children in exchange of accumulating more schooling....

This paper develops an Index of Economic Well-being (IEWB) for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden for the period 1980 to 2001 which recognizes four components: Current effective per capita consumption flows; Net societal accumulation of stocks of...

In this chapter, Lars Osberg and Andrew Sharpe provide an overview of trends in a number of dimensions of economic well-being (consumption flows, stocks of wealth, income equality, and economic security) from the lens of the Index of Economic Well-being, a new composite measure of economic...

A Peruvian community-based organization, a comedor popular (communal kitchen), is studied in this article to show how, as a micro-level institution, it fosters productivity in order to reduce poverty. The concepts of institutions, productivity and poverty are reviewed to establish a framework of...

L’objectif général visé par cette étude est d’analyser l’évolution des indicateurs sanitaires et du bien-être de l’enfant et de la femme en lien avec la mise en oeuvre du Plan de Développement Sanitaire (PDS 2005-2009) afin de faire des recommandations en vue d’accélérer les...

While past labour market reforms have been successful in terms of employment, the relative poverty risk and income inequality have remained broadly unchanged in recent years. Some social groups remain particularly vulnerable, including individuals in non-regular employment, the unemployed and...

Faced with exceptionally rapid population ageing, Korea should address obstacles that lower fertility rates while encouraging higher labour force participation, particularly among women. While public social spending is currently very low, there is pressure for increased outlays on pensions,...