This article discusses whether transition to retirement may be associated with a greater probability of becoming poor. Having recourse to the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for Portugal, the analysis is focused on a sample of individuals who retired in the period 1994-2001....

This paper analyzes the early retirement decisions made by Portuguese workers aged 50 to 64. It investigates the main characteristics of early retirees, and the main determinants of their decision, based on the eight waves of the European Community Household Panel for Portugal, from 1994 to...

Child poverty is a problem firmly recognized in the industrialized world. In the EU nearly one in every five children was poor in 2008 (for the population as a whole the risk of poverty was around 17 per cent). The dimension of the problem and its consequences point out for the importance of...

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion on the current state of knowledge with regard to the clustering of European welfare states, especially the Mediterranean countries. We want to demonstrate that the reforms be carried out well, to varying degrees, over the period 1990-2006 may...

In the extensive literature that has been dedicated during the past fifteen years to the comparative analysis of the welfare states, a significant number of studies have focused on the identification of the ideal regimes or types, in addition to their empirical validation. The celebrated work,...

In the extensive literature that has been dedicated during the past fifteen years to the analysis of the reform of the welfare states, a significant number of studies have focused on the characterisation of the nature and direction of the changes in the main social programmes. This article seeks...