Public Transfers and the Age-Profile of Poverty in Europe

Ensuring adequate living standards to a growing number of elderly while restraining the growth of pension spending represents the main challenge for pension policy in most countries. There is a need for an in-depth analysis of the economic conditions of the elderly which can help targeting resources in the coming years to the more needy groups. Children are another potentially vulnerable group of the population: their poverty can affect human capital accumulation and have long lasting effects on life-time well-being. Using data from the latest wave of the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), we document that the poverty rates of these two age groups with respect to the other components of the population differ considerably across European countries. These differences are largely due to the different anti-poverty effectiveness of national social policies. In particular, in 'Social Democratic' and 'Corporatist' welfare states the age-profile of poverty is flat; on the contrary, in Anglo-Saxon and especially in Southern European countries young and elderly groups show remarkably higher poverty rates.

[1]  J. Cunha,et al.  Fiscal Sustainability and Policy Implications for the Euro Area , 2008, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[2]  D. Franco,et al.  Pension Policy and Poverty in Italy: Recent Developments and New Priorities , 2008 .

[3]  C. Whelan,et al.  On the Multidimensionality of Poverty and Social Exclusion , 2007 .

[4]  Andrea Brandolini,et al.  Measurement of Income Distribution in Supranational Entities: The Case of the European Union , 2007 .

[5]  P. Profeta,et al.  The Redistributive Design of Social Security Systems , 2007 .

[6]  Rolf Aaberge,et al.  Region-specific versus country-specific poverty lines in analysis of poverty , 2007 .

[7]  Eric Marlier,et al.  The EU and Social Inclusion: Facing the Challenges , 2006 .

[8]  L. Rainwater,et al.  A re-examination of welfare states and inequality in rich nations: How in-kind transfers and indirect taxes change the story , 2006 .

[9]  D. Mantovani,et al.  An Age Perspective on Economic Well-Being and Social Protection in Nine OECD Countries , 2006 .

[10]  S. Slavov.  Age Bias in Fiscal Policy: Why Does the Political Process Favor the Elderly? , 2006 .

[11]  M. Förster,et al.  Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries in the Second Half of the 1990s , 2005 .

[12]  P. Poutvaara,et al.  Why are More Redistributive Social Security Systems Smaller? A Median Voter Approach , 2005, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[13]  C. Mulligan,et al.  Political and Economic Forces Sustaining Social Security , 2004 .

[14]  C. Mulligan,et al.  Internationally Common Features of Public Old-Age Pensions, and Their Implications for Models of the Public Sector , 2004 .

[15]  F. Nielsen,et al.  Determinants of Relative Poverty in Advanced Capitalist Democracies , 2003, American Sociological Review.

[16]  J. Gelissen,et al.  Three worlds of welfare capitalism or more? A state-of-the-art report , 2002 .

[17]  V. Galasso,et al.  The political economy of social security: a survey , 2002 .

[18]  R. Disney,et al.  The Economic Weil-Being of Older People in International Perspective: A Critical Review , 2002, Annual Review of Gerontology and Geriatrics.

[19]  H. Siebert,et al.  Social Security Pension Reform in Europe , 2002 .

[20]  Julie S. Lynch,et al.  The Age-Orientation of Social Policy Regimes in OECD Countries , 2001, Journal of Social Policy.

[21]  Bernd Raffelhüschen.  Generational Accounting in Europe , 1999 .

[22]  C. Mulligan,et al.  Gerontracy, Retirement, and Social Security , 1999 .

[23]  T. Smeeding,et al.  Generations and the Distribution of Economic Well-Being: A Cross-National View , 1998 .

[24]  A. Deaton,et al.  The Analysis of Household Surveys (Reissue Edition with a New Preface): A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy , 2018 .

[25]  G. Bonoli.  Classifying Welfare States: a Two-dimension Approach , 1997, Journal of Social Policy.

[26]  M. Ferrera,et al.  The 'Southern Model' of Welfare in Social Europe , 1996 .

[27]  D. Mitchell.  Income Transfers in Ten Welfare States , 1991 .

[28]  G. Esping‐Andersen,et al.  The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism , 1990 .

[29]  Mahabub Hossain,et al.  Income Distribution and Poverty , 1989 .

[30]  Amartya Sen,et al.  The Standard of Living. , 1988 .

[31]  A. Sen,et al.  POOR, RELATIVELY SPEAKING , 1983 .