Offering a comparative perspective, this book examines working poverty - those in work who are still classified as 'poor'. It argues that the growth in numbers of working poor in Europe is due to the transition from a Keynesian Welfare State to a 'post-fordist' model of production.

There has been a rapid global expansion of academic and policy attention focusing on in-work poverty, acknowledging that across the world a large number of the poor are ‘working poor’. Taking a global and multi-disciplinary perspective, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of current research at the intersection between work and poverty.

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.

Offering a comparative perspective, this book examines working poverty - those in work who are still classified as 'poor'. It argues that the growth in numbers of working poor in Europe is due to the transition from a Keynesian Welfare State to a 'post-fordist' model of production.

This thought-provoking book provides an in-depth analysis of the working poor phenomenon and its causes across welfare regimes, and identifies the most efficient policy mixes and best practices that could be utilized to resolve this problem. Eric Crettaz argues that 'the working poor' is too broad a category to be used for meaningful academic or policy discussion, and that a distinction must be made between different categories of poor workers. He illustrates how different welfare regimes generate different forms of working poverty via in-depth case studies of various OECD countries over the past decade, underpinned by a theoretical and conceptual framework. Using meta-analyses of evaluations of social policy tools, the author addresses the key question of what constitutes the most efficient policies to deal with the problem of working poverty. Fighting Working Poverty in Post-industrial Economies will prove an enlightening and stimulating read for academics, researchers and students across various disciplines including sociology, economics and political science. In addition, policymakers and other stakeholders seeking innovative solutions to the potentially growing problem of working poverty will find this book to be an invaluable point of reference.

For more than a decade, organizations such as the IMF, OECD, and the ILO have issued concerns about the trend of increased inequality in rich welfare states, while influential thinkers and think tanks have come to agree on at least one central point: globalization and technological progress have exacerbated the existing inequities in social market economies. Across Europe, despite high social spending and work-related welfare reforms, poverty remains a largely intractable problem for policymakers and the persistent reality for citizens.In Decent Incomes for All, the authors shed new light on recent poverty trends in the European Union and the corresponding responses by European welfare states. They analyze the effect of social and fiscal policies before, during, and after the recent economic crisis and study the impact of alternative policy packages on poverty and inequality. The book also explores how social investment and local initiatives of social innovation can contribute to tackling poverty, while recognizing that there are indeed structural constraints on the increase of the social floor and difficult trade-offs involved in reconciling work and poverty reduction. Differences across countries are, however, stark, which suggests that there are lessons to be learned and policy changes to be applied, if the political will exists.