Caroline Dewilde

The Multidimensional Measurement of Poverty in Belgium and Britain: A Categorical Approach

In recent years, both in socialscience and policy circles, there has been agrowing consensus on the multidimensionalnature of poverty. However, theoperationalisation of the concept has notfollowed this development, as most studies arestill primarily based on income. In thisarticle, we propose to measure the concept ofpoverty using both monetary and non-monetaryindicators. To this end, a latent classmeasurement model is used, allowing us to takeaccount of the multidimensionality of the dataand the discrete nature of most availablepoverty indicators. The proposed measurementinstrument allows for poverty to manifestitself in different ways or forms for differentsubgroups in the population. Furthermore, theoccurrence of multiple deprivation, rather thana `negative score on only one indicator, istaken into account. In addition, specialattention is paid to the feasibility ofconstructing a multidimensional poverty measurewhich can be used to study poverty dynamicswith longitudinal panel data. We presentfigures on the size and the social distributionof the `poor population in Belgium andBritain. These figures indicate that theresults of our multidimensional measurementprocedure are both plausible and substantivelyinterpretable.

A life-course perspective on social exclusion and poverty.

This article assesses whether it is possible to reconceptualize the traditional research approaches to the relationship between poverty and the life cycle on the basis of different sociological perspectives on the life course found in the literature. While the family-cycle approach, which was originally formulated by Seebohm Rowntree (1902), is criticized for being static, descriptive, normative and inflexible, dynamic poverty research is mostly confined to the quantitative analysis of income trajectories, and thus offers only a partial solution to our problem. However, the life-course perspective allows us to combine the best elements of these traditional approaches and to reconceptualize them into a general framework for the study of social exclusion and poverty. To this end, three sociological perspectives on the life course are considered: the traditional North-American life-course perspective formulated by Elder (1974), the Continental institutional approach, and a combined approach which we label the political economy of the life course. Drawing from these three perspectives, we propose a general framework of analysis and formulate hypotheses regarding the phenomena of social exclusion and poverty over the life course which can subsequently be empirically validated.

Divorce and the Housing Movements of Owner-Occupiers: A European Comparison

Divorce usually carries a range of economic consequences for both men and women, the housing situation of the ex-partners being among the most important ones. So far, however, the housing consequences of this life event, and in particular the way these are influenced by institutional arrangements, have been somewhat of a neglected topic. This paper focuses on one aspect of this process, more specifically the impact of divorce on tenure changes of homeowners, using comparative panel data for 12 European countries. It is concluded that although divorce significantly raises the odds of experiencing a tenure change for homeowners in all countries under consideration, this process is fairly similar across European welfare states. While institutional arrangements mitigating the economic consequences of divorce for women do not seem to explain much variation between countries, cross-national differences in tenure changes for homeowners are partly influenced by social housing policies and the extent of family support.

The trade-off between home-ownership and pensions: individual and institutional determinants of old-age poverty

ABSTRACT This article reports an analysis of European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data to test the hypothesis suggested by Kemeny (1981) and Castles (1998) of a trade-off between the extent of home-ownership and the generosity of old-age pensions. To this end, we evaluate the impact of a range of both pensions arrangements and housing policies on the risk of poverty in old age. The most important analytical innovation is the inclusion of social housing provision as an important policy alternative to the encouragement of home-ownership. Although we found substantial empirical support for the trade-off hypothesis, the findings raise several issues for discussion and further research. Firstly, we found that neither generous pensions nor high ownership rates had the strongest poverty-reducing potential, for this was most strongly associated with the provision of social housing for older people. Furthermore, the analysis identified a group of older people who are faced with a double disadvantage, in the sense that in high home-ownership countries, those who did not possess their own homes also tended to receive low pension benefits. Although this effect arises at least partly as a result of selection – the larger the ownership sector, the more selective the group of people who do not own their homes – the high poverty risk among ‘non-owners’ was apparently not countered by the pension system.

The influence of formal and informal support systems on the labour supply of divorced mothers

ABSTRACT In this article, we evaluate the effect of both formal and informal childcare support systems on the post-divorce labour supply of divorced mothers. To this end, we model the change in working hours before and after divorce by using a multilevel approach, estimating the impact of both micro- and macro-level determinants. Although we find empirical evidence for the hypothesis that a countrys institutional environment plays an important role in facilitating employment as a strategy for mothers to cope with their financial losses following partnership dissolution, our conclusion is that the change in labour supply is more responsive to the whole of a countrys family policies rather than to so-called ‘domain-specific’ indicators of formal and informal childcare provision. Furthermore, our empirical evidence suggests that at the micro-level, formal and informal childcare strategies are connected. The complementary role of informal support systems, facilitating the use of formal childcare, is an important finding from a policy point of view. However, further research will have to make clear which conditions have to be fulfilled in order to help divorced mothers to combine work and care, thus enabling them to mitigate the economic consequences of partnership dissolution.

Becoming Poor in Belgium and Britain: the Impact of Demographic and Labour Market Events

In this paper, we model the impact on the entry into poverty of a range of demographic and labour market events. Our analyses are based on longitudinal panel data from two countries belonging to a different regime type – Belgium and Britain. The results show that while in Belgium the impact of most life events is relatively small, in Britain most demographic and labour market events significantly raise the chances of becoming poor. We link the observed poverty entry patterns to the ways in which economic welfare in Belgium and Britain is distributed between the three main systems of resources distribution: the welfare state, the labour market and the family. We furthermore find that the combined influence of the interrelated parts of the welfare regime on the role of women in the household economy is a potentially important explanatory factor.

Housing and Poverty: The 'Missing Link'

In recent years, both in social science and political circles, there has been a growing consensus on the multi-aspectual nature of poverty. Poverty not only refers to a lack of income, but also to an inadequate participation in different domains of life, such as employment, education, housing and health. Starting from the operationalization of poverty as a network of social exclusions, we estimate the relative importance of housing problems as a dimension of poverty for four countries: Denmark, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain. The choice of countries is based on their different position in mainstream welfare state typologies and housing system typologies. We conclude that housing problems occupy a large part of everyday life for the poor in those countries where housing policy has not been considered an integral part of the post-war welfare state. This is the case for both Belgium and Spain.