Data on the weight and height of children are used to assess living standards and public policy in Uzbekistan, the most populous of the Central Asian republics. The paper begins by making the case for the use of such data, contrasting them with monetized measures of welfare based on household...

The first half of the 1990s brought major changes to Hungary. The positive sides of the transformation in the Hungarian economy and society were accompanied by less welcome aspects - a sharp fall in GDP, double-digit unemployment and falling real incomes. How have children fared in these...

This working paper documents the economic and social crises in Georgia during the 1990s, their structural causes and the survival strategies adopted by the Georgian population, the vast majority of whom became impoverished, with large families particularly vulnerable. It also examines the hopes...

This paper offers an analysis of the hardships and the threats to children during the transition in Poland. Because all the various poverty lines used to distinguish the poor from the non-poor point to the same conclusion that under-15-year-olds represent the population group most at risk of...

This paper has three parts. The first examines the problems of Romanian children at risk in their natural families; the second analyses the conditions of abandoned children, children in institutions and other children in special circumstances of risk; and the third offers a summary of the...

The single most likely way to leave the unemployment insurance (UI) register in Hungary is not by getting a job but by running out of benefit. This situation raises two questions. First, what are the implications of the cessation of UI for living standards? Second, does UI exhaustion have much...

This is a study of child poverty in a fast-changing region. Since 1998 almost all countries of the South-Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States region have shown signs of economic recovery. The numbers of people living in income poverty has fallen, living standards have generally...

Evidence is considered on differences in access to education and in learning achievement within the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The situation inherited from the communist period is first summarized: there were some significant disparities with, for...

The project, through a series of reports on child and family well-being, has had a remarkable impact on policy makers, academics, politicians and members of the public. One of the keys to its success has been the comprehensive set of demographic and social indicators and related policy and...