Mapping at-risk-of-poverty rates, household employment, and social spending

As a first step stylized facts are presented concerning at-risk-of-poverty rates for the non-elderly population, household employment (a concept introduced in this chapter) and social spending in European welfare states. The chapter provides a first exploration of a central theme of the book, which relates to employment-centred welfare reform: is it possible to structurally replace spending on cash benefits for working-age adults and their families with employment creation and to simultaneously reduce poverty among working-age adults and their children? The ‘mapping’ of poverty rates, household employment and spending is based on results from regression analysis of cross-country differences in levels of poverty and a decomposition of changes in poverty. The chapter also elaborates on the observation that spending does not seem as ‘efficient’ in some welfare states as in others, and formulates a number of caveats with regard to the notion of ‘efficiency’.