Suchergebnisse

In this paper, using the EU-SILC 2006 data-set, we seek to explore the extent to which a consideration of welfare regime and socio-economic differences in poverty levels and patterns and variation in the consequences of poverty for economic stress can assist us in making informed choices between alternative poverty indicators. Poverty in the EU is normally defined in terms of income thresholds defined at the level of each member state. However, the enlargement of the EU and the consequent widening of the gap in living standards between the richest and the poorest member states has had the consequence that a country such as Ireland perform poorly in comparison with a number of the New Member States (NMS) despite enjoying obvious advantages in terms of material living standards. Such paradoxical findings have produced a number of different but interrelated responses. The first focuses on the limitations imposed by an entirely national frame of reference. An alternative critique takes as its starting point the fact that low income is an unreliable indicator of poverty. In this paper we seek to explore the strength of both critiques by comparing the outcomes associated with measuring being 'at risk of poverty' and consistent poverty at both national and EU levels. Our analysis suggest that it is possible to develop an approach that would allow us to achieve the stated EU objective of assessing the scale of exclusion from minimally acceptable level of standards of living in individual countries while also measuring the extent to which the whole population of Europe is sharing in the benefits of high average prosperity.

Persistent at-risk-of-poverty; Ma?tre, Russell and Watson While cross-sectional analysis of poverty is extremely important, it still constitutes a snapshot of a situation at a precise point of time. By excluding the time dimension, this approach limits our understanding of poverty since it cannot assess the duration of poverty, transitions into and out of poverty, nor the effect of people?s previous experience of poverty and the influential role it plays on current (and future) poverty outcomes. In this paper we focus our analysis on persistent at-risk-of-poverty in Ireland as measured by one of the European Laeken indicators and using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Our results show that in 2008 almost 10 per cent of the Irish population was persistently income poor at the 60 per cent median income line during the four-year period 2005 to 2008, while two-thirds of individuals did not have any experience of poverty during that time. Overall, children, persons living in a household headed by a female, or those who are unemployed, ill or disabled, or have a low level of education, are particularly exposed to persistent poverty. Even though the level of cross-sectional income poverty has declined recently in Ireland, the country has a very high level of persistent at-risk-of-poverty by European standards.

This report uses EU-SILC data for 2016 to examine differences by social risk group and social class in access to care services ? specifically, childcare and home care for people with an illness or disability. We focus on 11 countries and four welfare regimes across Europe. We also examine the association between access to these services and both poverty and employment. There are three main findings. First, countries with universal services, or a strong welfare state, provide greater access to care overall, and greater access for vulnerable social risk and social class groups. Countries with means tested services offer lower coverage which results in a greater chance of unmet need for care. Second, certain social-risk groups have a higher chance of experiencing unmet need for childcare and home care. Social class or household composition differences within such groups cannot fully explain their likelihood of reporting unmet need. This suggests that social-risk groups are particularly vulnerable to unmet need. Third, unmet need for childcare and home care is associated with deprivation and, in the case of childcare, non-employment. In this way, unmet need for childcare in particular may act as a barrier to labour market participation. Although our analysis cannot establish a causal link between the two, unmet care need and non-employment are related, and could be a significant force for social exclusion. Policy efforts should limit the experience of unmet care needs.

This paper draws on the EU-SILC dataset to investigate changes over the period 2004 to 2014 in the trends and dynamics in poverty for social risk groups in selected European countries representing different welfare regimes (Social democratic, Corporatist, Liberal and Southern). Social risk groups differ in the challenges they face to their capacity to convert resources (such as capital and skills) into desired outcomes (goods and services). They include lone parents, adults with a disability, young adults, children, older adults and the reference group of other working-age adults. The comparative element of the project allowed us to assess whether certain welfare regimes were better at protecting more vulnerable groups. We address three research questions: Do the same social risk groups face higher risks of poverty (and greater persistence of poverty) in all countries? Is the ?social risk gap? ? the difference in poverty across groups ? larger in countries like Ireland than in Social democratic countries like Sweden? Did the recession lead to polarisation between the vulnerable social risk groups and other working-age adults? We find that lone parents and families of working-age adults with a disability experience higher deprivation and poverty rates across all countries. Ireland, along with the other Liberal regime country, the UK, stood out as having poorer outcomes for the vulnerable groups, especially in terms of material deprivation. There was some evidence of polarisation over time in Ireland and the UK to the detriment of the vulnerable groups. This was not a pattern found across most countries, however.