ABSTRACT The European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2005 wave includes a special module on inter-generational transmission of poverty. In addition to the standard data relating to income and material deprivation, information relating to parental background and childhood circumstances was collected for all household members aged over 24 and less than 66 at the end of the income reference period. In principle, the module provides an unprecedented opportunity to apply a welfare regime perspective to a comparative European analysis of the relationship between poverty and social exclusion and parental characteristics and childhood economic circumstances. In this paper, we seek to exploit such potential. In pursuing this objective, it is necessary to take into account some of the limitations of the data. We do by restricting our attention to a set of countries where data issues seem less extreme. Finally, we compare findings from one dimensional and multidimensional approaches to poverty and social exclusion in order to provide an assessment of the extent to which our analysis of welfare regime variation provides a coherent account of the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.

ABSTRACT In this paper we address the question of the relative importance of within and between country differences in income and material deprivation in the European Union in the context of recent suggestions that insufficient attention has been paid to the latter. In particular, we respond to the argument that the ‘state bounded’ relative income approach obscures the significance of EU-wide reference groups. Making use of EU-SILC 2004, we have sought to quantify the magnitude of relevant within and between country differences and their relative impact. Overall, our analysis supports the view that the predominant frame of reference is a national one. The limited impact of European reference groups observed in our analysis does not require explanation in terms of the emergence of a European social stratification system. Furthermore, the significance of such comparisons depends not only on the expectations of those affected by European inequalities but on the degree of legitimacy afforded to ensuing demands. While an EU-wide income-threshold can provide information regarding progress of the Union towards greater social cohesion, its usage for this purpose does not require a strong sense of European identity. Given the current status of the European Social Model, it would seem unwise to attribute an undue degree of policy relevance to the relatively modest impact of EU-wide reference groups revealed in our analysis.

ABSTRACT In this paper we consider the consequences for measurement of material deprivation, consistent poverty and economic vulnerability of the shift from the ECHP data set to the EU-SILC instrument. Despite the restricted number of deprivation items available in EU-SILC, we show that there is a substantial overlap between such measures when they are estimated using EU-wide and a set of Irish specific indicators. By placing the EU-wide measures in the context of the full range of Irish indicators, we demonstrate that they allow us to identify clusters of individuals sharply differentiated in terms of their multidimensional deprivation profiles. They also provide an understanding of the socio-economic factors associated with such differentiation that departs in only modest respects from that derived from the more comprehensive set of Irish specific indicators.

ABSTRACT In this paper we address issues relating to vulnerability to economic exclusion and levels of economic exclusion in Europe. We do so by applying latent class models to data from the European Community Household Panel for thirteen countries. This approach allows us to distinguish between vulnerability to economic exclusion and exposure to multiple deprivation at a particular point in time. The results of our analysis confirm that in every country it is possible to distinguish between a vulnerable and a non-vulnerable class. Association between income poverty, life-style deprivation and subjective economic strain is accounted for by allocating individuals to the categories of this latent variable. The size of the vulnerable class varies across countries in line with expectations derived from welfare regime theory. Between class differentiation is weakest in social democratic regimes but otherwise the pattern of differentiation is remarkably similar. The key discriminatory factor is life-style deprivation, followed by income and economic strain. Social class and employment status are powerful predictors of latent class membership in all countries but the strength of these relationships varies across welfare regimes. Individual biography and life events are also related to vulnerability to economic exclusion. However, there is no evidence that they account for any significant part of the socio-economic structuring of vulnerability and no support is found for the hypothesis that social exclusion has come to transcend class boundaries and become a matter of individual biography. However, the extent of socio-economic structuring does vary substantially across welfare regimes. Levels of economic exclusion, in the sense of current exposure to multiple deprivation, also vary systematically by welfare regime and social class. Taking both vulnerability to economic exclusion and levels of exclusion into account suggests that care should be exercised in moving from evidence on the dynamic nature of poverty and economic exclusion to arguments relating to the superiority of selective over universal social policies.

Recent poverty research based on analyses of panel data have highlighted the importance of income dynamics. In this paper we study mobility into and out of relative income poverty from one year to the next using data for twelve countries from the European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP). The ECHP has unique potential as a harmonized data set to serve as the basis for comparisons of income and poverty dynamics across EU countries, and here we begin exploiting this potential by analysing income poverty transitions from Wave 1 to Wave 2. As well as describing the extent of these transitions, we analyse the pattern by fitting log-linear and linear by linear models commonly employed in the analysis of social mobility. Moving from general to specific models we show the relative impact of hierarchy, immobility and affinity effects. Our analysis shows that cross-national variation in short-term poverty dynamics is predominantly a consequence of ‘shift’ rather then ‘association effects’. Variation across countries in patterns of poverty persistence is extremely modest. Models that assume that the processes underlying poverty dynamics are constant across countries perform almost as well as those that allow for cross-national variability.