New stylised facts on the incidence of low pay among employees and earnings mobility for
13 European countries and US are presented for the first time. The incidence is shown to be a
good measure of wage inequality in the lower half of the earnings distribution. Analysing
level and composition and mobility of workers out of low pay across countries sheds new
light on inequality. Descriptive differences are strong and are confirmed in multivariate
analysis: young age, low skills, female gender, part-time employment, and work in retail
trade, hotels, catering and personal services, generally contribute significantly to the risk of
being low paid and reduce the chances of escaping. Countries seem to combine these
characteristics into low-wage employment in different proportions. However, important
international differences are found. Two extreme cases – Denmark and the US – show very
stable low-wage incidence while incidence has grown rapidly in the UK, Germany and the
Netherlands.
The new knowledge is still insufficient for a full analysis of economic and institutional
implications and explanations of low pay. Instead a look is taken at these separately in an
attempt to refresh the research agenda. No direct link is found to aggregate employment nor to
the employment rate of the low skilled. The industrial structure of employment has little effect
on the aggregate incidence of low pay. However, differences between low-wage production of
goods and services are important. Potential effects of low pay on productivity growth are
signalled and so is the role of consumer demand. Both are important issues for further
research. ‘Inclusive’ labour relations – working via high collective bargaining, with or
without support of mandatory extension or a national minimum wage – seem to help
containing low-pay incidence. An important potential determinant, requiring more research,
of such relations seems the membership rate of employer associations. The optimistic
conclusion is that countries have some leeway in ‘choosing’ low-wage incidence, but that it is
not an easy choice.

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.

Abstract

Recent research on social inequality and the family has pointed out that partners provide an important social context for individuals’ decisions, behaviour and resulting social outcomes. Unemployment is a particularly interesting issue to be studied in the context of partnership, as unemployment and the ensuing loss of income of one partner might affect the whole family, and fast re-employment reduces the risks of economic uncertainty and deprivation of the family. However, the particular effects of the partner and his or her resources on unemployment of the other and its duration have not yet been fully explored.
In our paper we examine how couples deal with each other’s unemployment, i.e. whether and how quickly re-integration into the labour market occurs. We look at the effects of different kinds of partner’s resources, in particular financial assets and social capital. Applying job search theory, one would expect that the more financial support the partner can provide, the longer an unemployment episode would last, whereas the higher the partner’s social capital, the more likely a job offer is to occur. Economic theories assume negative effects of both the partner’s financial resources and social capital on the other’s re-employment chances, either due to specialisation gains in the joint household or due to individual maximising of bargaining power that keeps the better-off partner from sharing resources. Whereas these theories are gender-neutral, gender role theories predict differential effects of the partner’s resources for women and men. If a male partner provides a high income during his wife’s unemployment this could prevent her from taking up work again. In the opposite case, this relationship of available resources and unemployment duration could be weak or non-existent. This ‘gender asymmetry’ should be modified by two characteristics: first, the birth cohorts the partners belong to, and second, whether or not they have children.
Empirically, we test these hypotheses using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), a longitudinal household survey. Based on this data source we analyse the effects of the partner’s resources on unemployment duration by applying event-history models. We find a partnership premium for men, whereas married women are least likely to leave unemployment. Regarding the role of different resources of the partner, men gain from their spouse’s labour market resources. Surprisingly, for women the partner’s income accelerates re-employment. However, this finding is mediated by the fact that in a traditional male breadwinner model the female minor earner refrains from re-entering paid work. Furthermore, we cannot detect historical changes, but strong differences for women with and without children.

In this paper we take advantage of the recent availability of EU SILC data relating to a wide range of EU countries to contribute to the recent debate relating to the Europeanization of reference groups. Our analysis addresses both weak and strong versions of the thesis. The former proposes that notions of an acceptable level of participation in one’s own society come to be influenced significantly by knowledge of conditions in other societies. The latter argues that people increasingly perceive themselves as part of a larger European stratification system. Our analysis leads us to reject both versions of the thesis. Rather than material deprivation having a uniform effect on subjective economic stress across national boundaries, its impact is highly dependent on national context. The impact of consumption deprivation declines in a proportionate manner as the level of national deprivation increases. An assumption of uniform effects across the EU would lead us to miss people in richer societies experiencing genuine exclusion from their societies while counting substantial numbers in such societies who are not experiencing such exclusion. In a context where the Europeanization of inequality is raising issues relating to both national and transnational forms of legitimacy, it is important to understand that there is no necessary relationship between such Europeanization and the Europeanization of reference groups.

The present study is based on the work of Beckfield (2006) who assesses the impact of European Integration on income inequality and furthermore on the work of Alderson and Nielsen (2002) who assess the impact of globalization on income inequality. The aim of the present study is a) to duplicate and control both studies with more recent data from the ECHP and EU SILC and b) to check if the effects of European Integration, as found by Beckfield (2006) hold a test by the globalization measures used by Alderson and Nielsen (2002). Our results show that both economic integration as well as migration as well as FDI outflow (commonly used as measures of globalization) have a significant and independent impact on income inequality

In sociology, the appropriateness of national approaches for understanding social
inequality in today’s societies is being increasingly questioned, and EU-wide ap-
proaches are advocated instead. In this paper, we link the growing debate about
national or EU-wide approaches to reference group theory, investigating whether
comparisons with foreign countries influence levels of individual life satisfaction.
Our results indicate that, on the one hand, more people can be assumed to have
a national frame of reference than a broader international one; on the other hand,
among those who do have an idea of how average people in other countries live,
cross-border comparisons certainly influence people’s satisfaction with life. Upward
comparisons in particular are important: The more people feel personally deprived,
relative to other countries, the less satisfied they are with their lives. In contrast,
the feeling of relative gratification has a much smaller impact on life satisfaction,
and often no impact at all. This leads us to conclude that EU-wide approaches to in-
equality do make sense, but that there is also no need to jettison national approaches
completely.

The migration has characterized the social and economic development of Italy since the end of the 19th century. The history of Italian migration is long and complex, if we think only of the many different destinations of the Italians during the years: United States and Latin America, in the first two decades of the 20th century; continental Europe, since the second post-war period; the industrialized areas of the northern Italy, being continually chosen in the course of last 60 years.
The internal migration, which has seen thick flows of workers from South to the North, especially in the years between the 1955 and 1975, seems is reviving in the latest years.
In this study we intend to describe the differences between the current internal migratory movements and the one of the 60s-70s. We focus on the features of the “new” southern people who move to the north (gender, age, education, occupation).
Furthermore, the main focus of the research will be the benefits resulting from migrant experience. To measure the social benefits of the Italian migrants we will perform an analysis of their social mobility.
The objective is to verify if a geographical mobility corresponds to a social mobility, in other words if the geographical mobility is a channel able to ensure greater social mobility and give a contribution to the reduction of the inequalities both of distributive and relational order.
The analysis will deal with intergenerational mobility and will be made on the Istat data (Indagine Multiscopo “Famiglia e soggetti sociali” 2003) that is based on a 24,000 families’ sample (approximately 50,000 people).

Social mobility has become a topic of central political concern. In political and also media circles it is widely believed that in Britain today mobility is in decline. However, this belief appears to be based on a single piece of research by economists that is in fact concerned with intergenerational income mobility: specifically, with the relation between family income and children’s later earnings. Research by sociologists using the same data sources – the British birth cohort studies of 1958 and 1970 – but focusing on intergenerational class mobility does not reveal a declining trend either in total mobility rates or in underlying social fluidity. The paper aims to investigate these divergent findings. It is shown that they do not result from the use of different subsets of the data or of different analytical techniques. What is, rather, emphasised is that, as against the background of the more stable and generally less fluid class mobility regime, it is the high level of income mobility of 1958 cohort, rather than the lower level of the 1970 cohort, that is chiefly in need of explanation. Further analyses – including ones of the relative influence of parental class and of family income on children’s educational attainment – suggest that the economists’ finding of declining mobility between the two cohorts may stem, in part at least, from the fact that the family income variable for the 1958 cohort provides a less adequate measure of ‘permanent income’ than does that for the 1970 cohort. But, in any event, it would appear that the class mobility regime more fully captures the continuity in economic advantage and disadvantage that persists across generations.

While recent research on class mobility in Britain has found no change in the association between fathers’ and children’s class positions, research on income mobility suggests that the association between parental income and children’s earnings increased between the birth cohorts of 1958 and 1970. In this paper we have started out from these divergent findings from analyses of the same data-sets.
We show, first of all, that the contrasting findings are not the result of the researchers concerned working, on account of missing data, with different subsets of respondents from the two data-sets. Secondly, we have shown that for both cohorts alike there is a stronger association between father’s class and child’s class than between family income and child’s earnings, although this difference is much reduced from the 1958 to the 1970 cohort.
Thirdly, we have examined the relationship between class and income, as present in the data that we have used in our analyses of mobility, and find that this relationship is generally stable except where family income is involved. For the 1958 cohort there is a much weaker linkage than for the 1970 cohort between family income, on the one hand, and father’s class, child’s class and child’s earnings, on the other. And, fourthly, we show corresponding relationships between father’s class, parental income and child’s highest education,
Thus, rather than searching the explanation to the observed increase in the association between family income and children’ earnings in specific conditions for the 1970 cohort, we would rather focus on the weakness of this association in the 1958 cohort. In this regard, we suggest that it may be that the apparent decrease in income mobility is at least in some important part the result of the family income variable for the later cohort providing a better measure of permanent income than that for the earlier cohort.

This article explores the possible impact of three institutional structures (education system, labor market institutions and social policy arrangements) on the public opinion on educational pay differentials by using cross national aggregate data (OECD countries). First it examines the hypothesis that so long as education system provides the opportunity to acquire the competencies that are valued in the market, and, social policies provide sufficient protection from market failures, individuals would accept educational pay differentials as a fair outcome which would, in turn, lead to the majority to have a favorable opinion on these differentials. The alternative hypotheses, on the other hand, emphasizes the impact of the nature of the wage determination on the formation of the public opinion by claiming that unless pay determination is centralized and possibilities for skill upgrading are provided (i.e. unless the necessary conditions for internalizing the systemic pay outcome are created) the public opinion on pay differentials would not be favorable regardless of the qualities of the education system and social policy. The implied micro mechanism is that so long as pay is largely determined by low level bargaining (i.e., enterprise, factory, individual) people would be inclined to evaluate the emerged outcome negatively despite the opportunities offered by the education system and risks covered by the social policy. By revealing the strengths and weaknesses of (and overlaps between) these two hypotheses the paper tries to account for the institutional determinants of public opinion on pay differentials. In the conclusion section, possible juxtapositions of these three institutional structures (education system, wage determination, social policy) would be revealed and the impact of particular ideal case institutional settings on legitimization of pay differentials is discussed.

This paper uses new data from EU-SILC for twenty-six European countries to examine the structure and distribution of material deprivation in the enlarged EU. We identify three distinct dimensions of material deprivation relating to consumption, household facilities and neighbourhood environment, and construct indices of these dimensions for each country and the EU as a whole. The extent of variation across countries and welfare regimes is shown to depend on the dimension on which one focuses , as does the strength of the association with household income and subjective economic stress. The index of consumption deprivation has by far the highest correlation with income, provides a highly reliable measure in itself, and allows segments of the population to be identified that are sharply differentiated in terms of their multi-dimensional deprivation profiles. On the basis of this evidence we make some suggestions as to the manner in which the measurement of material deprivation in the European Union should be developed through the proposed special module of deprivation which will form part of the 2009 wave of EU-SILC.

In this paper we seek to put Irish poverty rates in a comparative European context. We do so in a context whereby the Irish economic boom and EU enlargement have led to increasing reservations being expressed regarding rates deriving from the EU ‘at risk of poverty’ indicator. Our comparative analysis reports findings for both overall levels of poverty and variation by household reference person characteristics for this indicator and a consistent poverty measure for Ireland, the UK and five smaller European countries spanning a range of welfare regimes. Our finding demonstrate that the distinctiveness of Ireland’s situation lies not in the overall levels of poverty per se but in the very high penalties associated with being in household where the household reference person is a lone parent or excluded from the labour market.

John Goldthorpe (2007) based his “Outline of a Theory of Social Mobility” on the assumption of cross-national similarity and temporal stability in (relative) mobility rates. In his theory, he argues that all individuals try to reach at least the same class position as their parents and that individuals do so by using class-specific resources and following class-specific investment strategies “from below” and from “above”.
Goldthorpe’s explanandum, however, is no longer in accordance with recent empirical findings. As, for example, Breen and Luijkx (2004) have shown, there is a considerable amount of cross-national variability and – for many countries – an increasing trend in social mobility. These findings cannot be addressed with the existing theoretical outline by Goldthorpe. Instead, we need to find out what accounts for these variations.
In my paper, I will argue that it is necessary to contextualize Goldthorpe’s main ideas of his outline of a theory of social mobility. It is not sufficient to look at different pathways for social mobility per se (set out by the “OED triangle”), but to bring in institutional and other macro-structural effects that have an impact on a) investments in education; b) returns to education; and c) direct inheritance effects. In the empirical part of the paper, I show for seven European countries, that institutional and other structural effects indeed have an impact on levels as well as on trends in social mobility. Much of the changes and differences in social mobility can thus be related to different contexts in which social (im-)mobility processes operate.

This paper compiles the results of international compartive research on well-being and the correlation between well-being and social inequality. It is a draft version of an entry for the Handbook “European Societies” edited by Immerfall and Therborn. Some of the more important findings are: European countries differ widley in their living conditions. Dimensions of social inequality are important for peoples subjective evaluation of their living conditions. Materialistic dimensions of social inequality seem to be of smaller importance in richer countries.

The life cycle concept has come to have considerable prominence in Irish social policy debate. However, this has occurred without any systematic effort to link its usage to the broader literature relating to the concept. Nor has there been any detailed consideration of how we should set about operationalising the concept. In this paper we argue the need for ‘macro’ life cycle perspectives that have been influenced by recent challenges to the welfare state to be combined with ‘micro’ perspectives focusing on the dynamic and multidimensional nature of social exclusion. We make use of Irish EU-SILC 2005 data in developing a life cycle schema and considering its relationship to a range of indicators of social exclusion. At the European level renewed interest in the life cycle concept is associated with the increasing emphasis on the distinction between ‘new’ and ‘old’ social risks and the notion that the former are more ‘individualised’. Inequality and poverty rather than being differentially distributed between social classes are thought to vary between phases in the average work life. Our findings suggest the “death of social class” thesis is greatly over blown. A more accurate appreciation of the importance of new and old social risks requires that we systematically investigate the manner in which factors such as social class and the life cycle interact.