There has been a raft of policy changes in the UK that are intended to help low-income families engage with the labour market. Drawing in part upon the findings of a small-scale qualitative study of the experiences of low-income working families, this article infers that the secular trend to...

The paper discusses the reasons for the observed variation in the sequencing, speed and content of reform policies, in the 1990s, among 25 post-socialist countries of Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union. It argues that these differences, while considerable in the early 1990s, did not...

In this paper, we deal with some pieces of evidence that are necessary to explain the paradox of rapid GDP growth despite the dismal competitiveness of the Greek economy during 1995-2008. It is shown how the structural weaknesses of the Greek economy have hit the domestic economy investigating...

This paper uses the introduction of the national minimum wage in the UK in April 1999 as a ‘natural experiment’ to analyse the impact of minimum wages on enrolment in schooling. At the time of its introduction, only workers aged 18 years or more were covered by the legislation. The paper...

The article, having characterised present European work-welfare policies in terms of a process of re-commodification, considers the consequences both from a capabilities and a rights perspective. Drawing on recent empirical research it seeks to bring these two perspectives together in order to...

The issue of health inequalities has steadily gained attention in South Korea, as income inequality widened and social polarization increased following the country’s economic crisis in the late 1990s. While official figures indicate a general trend of worsening mental health, with rapidly...

Just over three decades ago, when Deng Xiaoping announced the policy of reform and openingup in 1978, China’s total imports and exports of $20.6 billion ranked 32nd among all nations and accounted for less than one percent of global trade. In 2010, China’s total merchandise trade exceeded $3...