This book explores the nature and extent of poverty and social exclusion in six European Union countries: Austria, Germany, Greece, Norway, Portugal and the UK, focusing on groups who are considered at risk.

In the field of anti-poverty policies, the interplay between the Europe 2020 overarching strategy and the 'Semester' have marked major discontinuity vis-à-vis the Open Method of Coordination for social protection and social inclusion (Social OMC) of the Lisbon phase. This book therefore asks whether and how Europe matters in the fight against poverty and social exclusion by assessing the emergence and possible institutionalisation of a European multi-level, multi-stakeholder and integrated policy arena in the new institutional framework. Supranational developments, multi-level interactions, as well as the strategy effects at the national level are analysed in six European countries - Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, UK and Sweden - with the aim to identify the key factors affecting the implementation of the Europe 2020 anti-poverty strategy. This book will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners in social policy, political science and European governance, and more broadly to European Union politics, European integrations studies, sociology and economics.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.Policymakers throughout Europe are enacting policies to support youth labour market integration. However, many young people continue to face unemployment, job insecurity, and the subsequent consequences.Adopting a mixed-method and multilevel perspective, this book provides a comprehensive investigation into the multifaceted consequences of social exclusion. Drawing on rich pan-European comparative and quantitative data, and interviews with young people from across Europe, this text gives a platform to the unheard voices of young people.Contributors derive crucial new policy recommendations and offer fresh insights into areas including youth well-being, health, poverty, leaving the parental home, and qualifying for social security.

This book offers a detailed analysis of the efforts made to reduce poverty and social exclusion in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.

How can we measure poverty in the United Kingdom today, and which measures are most reliable? Is poverty related to other problems and disadvantages? Based on the largest research study on UK poverty ever commissioned, these fascinating volumes answer these questions and more, providing the most authoritative and up-to-date picture ever assembled of poverty throughout the four countries of the United Kingdom. Using state-of-the-art measurement methods, Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK looks across geography, time, and key domains like health, employment, and housing to make enlightening--and sometimes shocking--comparisons. In the second volume, contributors consider different aspects of disadvantage, from access to local services, the world of work, the quality of housing and neighborhoods, and physical and mental health. They also look at wider aspects of social and community life, as well as participation in civic and political activities.

Engaging systematically with severe forms of poverty in Europe, this important book stimulates academic, public and policy debate by shedding light on aspects of deprivation and exclusion of people in absolute poverty in affluent societies. It examines issues such as access to health care, housing and nutrition, poverty related shame, and violence. The book investigates different policy and civic responses to extreme poverty, ranging from food donations to penalisation and “social cleansing” of highly visible poor and how it is related to concerns of ethics, justice and human dignity.

Poverty and inequality remain at the top of the global economic agenda, and the methodology of measuring poverty continues to be a key area of research. This new book, from a leading international group of scholars, offers an up to date and innovative survey of new methods for estimating poverty at the local level, as well as the most recent multidimensional methods of the dynamics of poverty. It is argued here that measures of poverty and inequality are most useful to policy-makers and researchers when they are finely disaggregated into small geographic units. Poverty and Social Exclusion: New Methods of Analysis is the first attempt to compile the most recent research results on local estimates of multidimensional deprivation. The methods offered here take both traditional and multidimensional approaches, with a focus on using the methodology for the construction of time-related measures of deprivation at the individual and aggregated levels. In analysis of persistence over time, the book also explores whether the level of deprivation is defined in terms of relative inequality in society, or in relation to some supposedly absolute standard. This book is of particular importance as the continuing international economic and financial crisis has led to the impoverishment of segments of population as a result of unemployment, bankruptcy, and difficulties in obtaining credit. The volume will therefore be of interest to all those working on economic, econometric and statistical methods and empirical analyses in the areas of poverty, social exclusion and income inequality.