Issues of poverty and social exclusion are high on the European policy agenda. This book reports findings from a study funded by the European Commission, using data from the European Community Household Panel, with a multi-dimensional approach to international comparisons of poverty and social exclusion.

Using the data from the `European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions' (EU-SILC), this book reflects the results of almost 5 years of research involving data producers and data users. It aims to improve our understanding of substantive challenges facing `Social Europe' and to contribute to the development of methods that provide new insights into the determinants and dynamics of income and living conditions. Through in-depth analyses, it enhances our knowledge of a wide range of topics: inequalities, role of social transfers, mortality risk due to poverty and social exclusion, intra-household variation in deprivation, between-country differences in housing conditions, unmet medical need, child deprivation, migrants' living conditions, as well as the dynamics of in-work monetary poverty and deprivation and of multidimensional poverty. The book also puts forward robust policy-relevant indicators in these fields, including longitudinal indicators. This volume is intended both for policy-makers and statisticians and for all those concerned about the impact of economic and social policies on people's lives and the ways in which the social dimension of Europe and its monitoring can be reinforced.

Discovering methods to combat poverty and social exclusion has now become a major political challenge in Europe. Combating Poverty in Europe offers an original and timely analysis of how this challenge is met by actors at European, national and subnational levels. Building on a European study comparing Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the UK, this book provides new insights into the processes and mechanisms that promote or hinder interaction between the increasingly multi-layered European system for responding to poverty and social exclusion in EU member states. The contributors present systematic and comparative analyses of social policy design, institutional frameworks and delivery practices from a multi-level governance perspective. Original and diverse, this book will appeal to researchers and scholars in comparative social policy, as well as policy officials in the EU, national government and anti-poverty NGOs.

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.

This collection brings together a wide range of views on the conceptualization and measurement of social exclusion and the indicators for monitoring the effectiveness of policies for combating social exclusion.

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.

In 22 case studies from across the WHO European Region, and 3 background papers on Roma, migrants and children, this publication focuses on how health systems can meet the needs of populations that are experiencing poverty and social exclusion, and thus at greater risk of being deprived of their right to health. The studies show some of the social conditions make people particularly vulnerable, and the ways in which interventions work to improve the accessibility, availability, acceptability and quality of health services, and the health system works through four functions (stewardship, service delivery, financing and resource generation) to address socially determined health inequities. The value of the case studies is to show what is going on in countries, to enable countries to learn from each other and thus to improve the health of populations experiencing poverty and social exclusion, as called for by WHO Regional Committee resolution EUR/RC52/R7 on poverty and health.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the gradual widening of scientific and policy debates on poverty from a narrow focus on income poverty to a more inclusive concept of social exclusion, has made poverty research both more interesting and more complicated. This transition to a more multidimensional conceptualization of poverty forms the background and starting point of this book. Researchers studying the 'social' and 'spatial' dimensions of poverty have only started to challenge and explore the boundaries of each other's research perspectives and instruments. This book brings together these different bodies of literature on the intersection of spatial and social exclusion for the first time, by providing a state-of-the art review written by internationally-recognized experts who critically reflect on the theoretical status of their research on social exclusion, and on the implications this has for future research and policy-making agendas.

Social indicators are an important tool for evaluating a country's level of social development and for assessing the impact of policy. Such indicators are already in use in investigating poverty and social exclusion in several European countries and have begun to play a significant role in advancing the social dimension of the European Union as a whole. The purpose of this book is to make a scientific contribution to the development of social indicators for the purposes of European policy-making. It considers the principles underlying the construction of policy-relevant indicators, the definition of indicators, and the issues that arise in their implementation, including that of the statistical data required. It seeks to bring together theoretical and methodological methods in the measurement of poverty/social exclusion with the empirical practice of social policy. The experience of Member States is reviewed, including an assessment of the National Action Plans on Social Inclusion submitted for the first time in June 2001 by the fifteen EU governments. The key areas covered by the book are poverty, including its intensity and persistence, income inequality, non-monetary deprivation, low educational attainment, unemployment, joblessness, poor health, poor housing and homelessness, functional illiteracy and innumeracy, and restricted social participation. In each case, the book assesses the strengths and weaknesses of different indicators relevant to social inclusion in the European Union, and makes recommendations for the indicators to be employed. Indicators for Social Inclusion in the European Union is being published at a critical stage in the evolution of the social agenda of the European Union. It is hoped that the report will play a role in widening public debate about the social dimension of Europe and that it will be of value to the social partners, to non-governmental and grass roots organizations, and to those living in poverty and social exclusion. It seeks to provide both a constructive background document at a crucial juncture in the evolution of the social dimension of the European Union and a reference work of continuing value.