Poverty and welfare reforms in Eastern Europe

In: (Post)transformational migration: inequalities, welfare state, and horizontal mobility, S. 99-120

Abstract

"This work investigates the links between poverty patterns and welfare reforms in Eastern Europe by focusing an antipoverty policy change in Estonia, Poland and Hungary during the last two decades. It aims at examining how transformation processes have so far re-shaped institutional mechanisms of social redistribution and understanding the implications of recent policy change for most vulnerable groups. The paper analyzes unemployment, family and social assistance reforms through the concept of multidimensional 'recalibration' and suggests that social inequalities and the impoverishment of specific social groups is deeply bound to normative ideas, distributive scope and functional change characterizing each system of social redistribution." (author's abstract)