The European social agenda is at a crucial stage. This book describes the Action Plans on Social Inclusion submitted to the European Union by national governments in June 2001 and investigates the indicators that can be used to assess social progress. It deals in a new way with key issues for social policy in Europe: poverty, income inequality, non-monetary deprivation, low educational attainment, unemployment, joblessness, poor health, poor housing and homelessness, functional illiteracy and innumeracy.

The European social agenda is at a crucial stage. This book describes the Action Plans on Social Inclusion submitted to the European Union by national governments in June 2001 and investigates the indicators that can be used to assess social progress. It deals in a new way with key issues for social policy in Europe: poverty, income inequality, non-monetary deprivation, low educational attainment, unemployment, joblessness, poor health, poor housing and homelessness, functional illiteracy and innumeracy.

The 2008 financial crisis triggered the worst global recession since the Great Depression. Many OECD countries responded to the crisis by reducing social spending. Through 11 diverse country case studies (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States), this volume describes the evolution of child poverty and material well-being during the crisis, and links these outcomes with the responses by governments. The analysis underlines that countries with fragmented social protection systems were less able to protect the incomes of...