In this paper the situation of three EU countries that have recently experienced substantial but very different reforms of their systems to support families with children is analysed and compared: Austria, Spain and the United Kingdom. The structure of these systems is very different: Austria...

This paper investigates the impact of economic and social reforms on the well-being of children in New Zealand. These reforms were among the most sweeping in scope and scale in any industrialized democracy, but have not led to an overall improvement in the well-being of children. There has been...

The relative costs of taking employment or receiving welfare are usually understood through comparisons of a person’s social security entitlements and their wage alternative, known as replacement rates. In some situations it appears that the additional income from working is negligible, and...

The UK Government is committed to abolishing fuel poverty amongst vulnerable households by the year 2010 and in the general population by 2016, but definition and measurement of fuel poverty remains controversial. We define a new measure of subjective household experience and explore links...

We take small steps towards the approximation between economic analysis and the science of climate forecasting in the formulation of policies to alleviate the impact of climatic shocks. We do so by estimating the relationship between climate variables and corn production in Ceará, an important...

This article aims at verifying the potential effect of federal income transfer programs created over the last few years on poverty as measured by the income criterion. The indicators do not reflect actual results; rather, they refer to impact simulations had the programs been applied to their...

This paper investigates the impact of a conditional cash transfer on child nutritional status in Brazil. We use data from "Bolsa Família" Research Impact Evaluation. "Bolsa Família" is a conditional cash transfer program focused on Brazilian poor families. In order to evaluate the average...

This article undertakes an economic evaluation of Fica Vivo Program in the slum of Morro das Pedras in Belo Horizonte. The cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses were run for the 2004-2006 period. The costs were accounted based on information by the Social Defense Secretary (SEDS) and the...

In this article we assess the impact of the Fica Vivo programme, for the prevention and control of criminality, set up in Brazil. Its design is inspired by the American programme CeaseFire and the principal objective is the reduction of homicides in areas where its incidence is high, in general,...

Falling output and living standards have pushed countries in transition from the socialist system to re-consider how best to target public resources on those in need. The paper investigates the workings of a new social assistance benefit in Uzbekistan, the largest of the former Soviet Central...