This paper focuses on microcredit, a financial tool adopted in many countries to fight financial exclusion and poverty. By employing microcredit strategies, small loans are granted to low income households who would ‘naturally’ be excluded from the formal financial system. Thus, microcredit...

The paper analyses the static and dynamic risk of poverty in the enlarged European Union. In the first part of the paper an overview of cross-sectional poverty rates in 25 European Member States (apart from Romania and Bulgaria) using several indexes is presented and assessed. In the second...

A correct assessment of public policies requires the analysis of deliberate and involuntary redistribution. Redistributive policies have an interpersonal as well as an intrapersonal dimension. To assess the latter, the entire lifetime of individuals and families has to be taken into...

Economic literature suggests adopting the equivalence scale in order to calculate the private monetary cost of a child. This estimation is based upon controversia1 assumptions about exogeneity of fertility choice, identica1 preferences and possibility of welfare comparisons. In this paper we...

This paper focuses on microcredit, a financial tool adopted in many countries to fight financial exclusion and poverty. By employing microcredit strategies, small loans are granted to low income households who would ‘naturally’ be excluded from the formal financial system. Thus, microcredit...