Suchergebnisse

Due to the ongoing Covid-crisis, the number of workers benefiting from short-time work schemes was high, especially during lockdowns, another large group of workers started working from home, and others, unfortunately, lost their jobs. The current situation is unprecedented, because it is the only global recession driven solely by a pandemic and the decrease in life expectancy is the worst since World War II. This article first shows that the literature on the socioeconomic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic does not say much about working poverty. Applying a theo-retical model presented in 2018 based on the four mechanisms that lead to working poverty (at the household level), this article considers the potential short- and midterm implications of the pandemic for the working poor in Europe. It also proposes conceptual reflections about which working poverty indicators may improve our understanding of what has unfolded since the pandemic began.

Many EU countries are faced with abysmal public debts and high unemployment, and may have to reduce their social expenditure and deregulate their labour market, which should lead to an increase in 'working poverty' (i.e., an increase in the number of working men and women who live in a low‐income household, or in a household that cannot afford certain goods and services considered essential for a decent life, respectively). However, working poverty remains an under‐analysed phenomenon in Europe. Moreover, the vast majority of existing definitions used in Europe are based on a relative income poverty line and the EU's official definition of 'in‐work', which raises concerns about the robustness of existing findings. This article first examines how the socioeconomic situation has evolved in seven EU Member States that have fared differently. In addition, the article examines whether the use of non‐monetary poverty indicators and of an encompassing definition of 'working' has an impact on the conclusions drawn. An attempt is made to identify the main macro‐level determinants of changes in 'working poverty' and to better understand their impact at the micro‐level.

While there is a growing awareness of the 're-emergence' of working poverty, this topic remains relatively under-researched. This article provides an encompassing review of the literature dealing with the situation in Europe, North America and the Antipodes, with a focus on the theoretical models found in this literature, the definitions used and the risk groups identified. The main conclusion is that most publications were not based on a specific theoretical model, which has led to a flurry of definitions; moreover, conclusions on certain risk groups are divergent. The end of the article focuses on what remains to be done, because there are good reasons to think that working poverty might become a more pressing problem in the near future, and social policy researchers will have to have good theoretical frameworks and robust evaluation strategies in the years to come.

AbstractMany Swiss farming families face socioeconomic disadvantage despite Switzerland being a wealthy country with instruments of agricultural policy financially supporting almost all farmers. However, official poverty statistics exclude Swiss farmers and scientific knowledge is rare about how such situations are experienced. This article scrutinises the situation of Swiss farming families living in poverty or material deprivation by intertwining qualitative and quantitative methods to enrich both types of data and interpretations. By statistically comparing farmers with the self‐employed in other economic sectors, it uses a novel way of comparing the farming with the non‐farming population. The article shows that the poverty among farmers resembles that of the self‐employed with no or few employees in other economic sectors and describes the lived experiences of poverty and material deprivation. It concludes that adaptive preferences make farming families resilient to socioeconomic disadvantage, while possibly leading to a loss of their livelihood in the long run.

The objective of this paper is to distinguish between different types of working poverty, on the basis of the mechanisms that produce it. Whereas the poverty literature identifies a myriad of risk factors and of categories of disadvantaged workers, we focus on three immediate causes of working poverty, namely low wage rate, weak labour force attachment, and high needs, the latter mainly due to the presence of children (and sometimes to the increase in needs caused by a divorce). These three mechanisms are the channels through which macroeconomic, demographic and policy factors have a direct bearing on working households. The main assumption tested here is that welfare regimes strongly influence the relative weight of these three mechanisms in producing working poverty, and, hence, the composition of the working-poor population. Our figures confirm this hypothesis and show that low-wage employment is a key factor, but, by far, not the only one and that family policies broadly understood play a decisive role, as well as patterns of labour market participation and integration.

The objective of this article is to distinguish between different types of working poverty, on the basis of the mechanisms that produce it. Whereas the poverty literature identifies a myriad of risk factors and of categories of disadvantaged workers, we focus on three immediate causes of in-work poverty, namely low remuneration rate, weak labor force attachment, and high needs, the latter mainly due to the presence of children (and sometimes to the increase in needs caused by a family breakup). These three mechanisms are the channels through which macroeconomic, demographic and policy factors have a direct bearing on working households. The main assumption tested here is that welfare regimes strongly influence the relative weight of these three mechanisms in producing working poverty. Our figures confirm this hypothesis and show that low-wage employment is a key factor but, by far, not the only one, and that family policies broadly understood play a decisive role, as well as patterns of labour market participation and integration.