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"The social partners often attain a more central role in decision-making during social or economic crises. This article examines whether this held true in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands during the COVID-19 pandemic. These are countries with strong institutionalised power relations. It assesses whether the crisis affected institutional stability and social partner representation, referred to as crisis corporatism. Drawing on 30 interviews with representatives of social partner organisations and government agencies, as well as labour market experts, we demonstrate strong institutional stability and path dependence in industrial relations during the crisis. While Sweden's institutionalised power relations remained stable, Finland and the Netherlands experienced temporary shifts, with governments bypassing the social partners on health-related issues. The health-care sector and precarious workers emerged as especially vulnerable."

"This discussion paper provides an updated analysis of gendered economic inequality in high- and middle-income countries. A review of the literature demonstrates that such an analysis needs to explicitly recognize that gender, poverty and (economic) inequality are intrinsically linked. Specifically, the paper addresses two sets of questions: First, how do intrafamily resource allocation and distribution patterns both reflect and shape gender inequalities in power and well-being, and what factors—including policyrelated ones—can mitigate these inequalities? Second, how do families as gendered institutions contribute to broader socio-economic inequalities, and what can be done to reduce/reverse these inequalities? Using data from the LIS Database, this paper shows considerable differences among 42 countries with respect to how likely women were to have their own income. The period from 2000 to 2010/2014 saw increasing rates of own incomes as well as women's incomes constituting larger shares in total household income. A key finding is that in countries where many women have an income of their own, relative poverty rates are lower. The comparative analyses, combined with a review of the literature, suggest that welfare state arrangements that support working women not only improve the overall employment rates of women but also help to prevent particularly women in low-income households from living in dependence and instead to have an income of their own—thus reinforcing the potential for poverty reduction. Moreover, institutional contexts that are generally conducive to women's employment tend to be effective across family forms."

"This article connects crisis corporatism with welfare regime and labour market segmentation theories to examine the responsiveness of social dialogue during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from the Eurofound EU PolicyWatch database, covering policy measures (N = 1139 measures) implemented across the EU from 2020 to 2022, it analyses the extent to which tripartite alliances, namely between trade unions, employer organisations and government, were associated with the implementation of policies that targeted the situation of (employment-related, and family- and health-related) vulnerable groups during the COVID-19 crisis in Europe. The findings show that the role of social partners – and in particular tripartite alliances for the vulnerable – was limited in implementing policies for the vulnerable. Regime-specific variations indicate that although social dialogue structures exist across countries, their operational significance and capacity to shape policies vary. Crisis corporatism, rather than reworking systems to foster inclusion, risks reproducing established boundaries."

"Single-parent families face unique challenges when it comes to in-work poverty. Without a second caregiver and earner, single parents have to compete with dual-earner couples for their position in the earnings distribution. Facing precarious employment and gendered wage inequality, single-parent families face a high risk to experience poverty even when they are working. This chapter presents empirical evidence on in-work poverty and inadequate wages in the policy context of 18 OECD countries. The impact of family structure, occupation, regulations of part-time work, paid parental leave, and various redistributive policies are examined. We distinguish three distinct patterns of performance in countries' approach to in-work poverty among single parents: A balanced approach of ensuring low inequality on the labor market combined with redistribution, an unbalanced approach of combating in-work poverty mostly through redistribution, and an approach in which high inequality on the labor market is compensated with redistributive policies only to a very limited extent. Countries that rely on a balanced approach to reduce inequality on the labor market, both with respect to class and gender, combined with an adequate level of redistribution, seem best situated for a durable reduction of poverty among working single parents."

"Although employment growth is propagated as being crucial to reduce poverty across OECD countries, the actual impact of employment growth on poverty rates is still unclear. This study presents novel estimates of the impact of macro-level trends in female labour force participation on trends in poverty, across 15 OECD countries from 1971 to 2013. It does so based on over 2 million household-level observations from the LIS Database, using Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions. This method allows for disentangling the impact of increasing women's employment rates from other possible confounders driving poverty outcomes. The results indicate that an increase of 10 percentage points in the female labour force participation rate was associated with a reduction of 1 percentage point of poverty across these countries. The increase in women's employment has had a significant impact on poverty trends. However, in the Nordic countries no such poverty reducing effect was found, as in these countries womens employment rates were very high and stable throughout the observation period. In countries that initially showed marked increases in women's employment, such as the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Canada, and the United States, the initial increases in women's employment rates were typically followed by a period in which these trends levelled. Hence, our findings suggest that the potential of following an employment strategy to reduce poverty in OECD countries has, to a large extent, been depleted."

"In this study, we examined to what extent family policies differently affect poverty among single-parent households and two-parent households. We distinguished between reconciliation policies (tested with parental leave and the proportion of unpaid leave) and financial support policies (tested with family allowances). We used data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database, covering 514,019 households in 18 OECD countries from 1978 to 2008, combined with data from the Comparative Family Policy Database. Our findings suggest that single- and two-parent households are less likely to be poor in countries that have longer parental leave, a smaller proportion of unpaid leave, and higher amounts of family allowances. Most notably, family policies reduced poverty to a greater extent among single-parent households. Paid leave more effectively facilitated the employment of single parents, thereby reducing their poverty more than among two-parent households. Family allowances decreased the risk of poverty of single-parent households relative to two-parent households in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, while increasing this relative risk in for instance Luxembourg, France, Germany and Ireland. Nevertheless, in absolute terms, in most countries family allowances were found to reduce a larger share of the poverty among single-parent households than among two-parent households."

"This paper examines to what extent family policies have affected earnings inequality within and between coupled households. Previous studies had found cross-country variation in the degree to which women's earnings attenuate earnings inequality between households. In this paper we explain this variation with reconciliation policies and financial support policies. We used person-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS, 2013) on 572,222 coupled households, covering the period from 1981 to 2005 in 18 OECD countries. These data were combined with country-level data from the Comparative Maternity, Parental, and Childcare Database (Gauthier, 2010). In countries with extensive reconciliation policies women contributed a larger share of total household earnings, and earnings inequality among women was relatively low. In societies with extensive financial support policies, women contributed a smaller share to total household earnings, and inequality among the earnings of women was relatively high. Women's earnings were found to attenuate inequality between households to a larger extent in countries with extensive reconciliation policies and limited financial support policies. Countries with family policy arrangements that facilitate women's employment and consequently smaller earnings inequalities within households also contribute to smaller inequalities between households."

"In this paper we show that women's earnings attenuate inequality between coupled households, even though the earnings of spouses are positively correlated. We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS, 2013) on 572,222 coupled households, covering the period from 1981 to 2005 in 18 OECD countries. Three trends are described. Firstly, over time women's earnings increasingly contributed to total household earnings, thereby increasing equality within households. Secondly, the positive correlation between spouses' earnings increased over time. Thirdly, earnings inequality among women declined. With a counter-factual decomposition technique on earnings inequality, we show that the combined effect of these trends was that women's earnings increasingly attenuated earnings inequality between households. The trend towards women's earnings increasingly attenuating the inequality between households was mainly driven by decreasing inequality among women. If inequality among women had not declined as it did in recent decades, inequality between households would have been 25% higher than it actually was in 2005."

"While the financial sustainability of pension systems has been high on reform agendas, the adequacy of retirement incomes has only recently come into focus. This chapter analyses old-age poverty from a comparative and longitudinal perspective using repeated waves of cross-sectional micro-level income data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). We focus on high-income OECD countries that experienced demographic ageing and substantial pension reforms since the mid-1980s, and analyse old age poverty in terms of relative income positions and purchasing capacity. Overall, there has been a secular trend towards a decline in old age poverty, which has converged towards the poverty rates observed in the working age population. However, since ongoing pension reforms in several countries have reduced public benefits, fostered prefunded savings, augmented the retirement age, and strengthened the link between contribution histories and old-age incomes, we identify population subgroups that have difficulties in gaining sufficient pension credits or savings into individual pension plans during their working lives to escape poverty in old age, including women, migrants, and those with lower education. We also present examples of poverty trends across synthetic cohorts in old age. Overall, we observe that more recent cohorts are better protected against poverty in old age compared to cohorts that were born longer ago."

"In this Voices article, we use emerging evidence to reflect on the consequences of Covid-19 for various aspects of workers' wellbeing. This brief review emphasises how COVID-19 exacerbates existing, well-understood inequalities, along the intersections of community, work, and family. Workers on the periphery of the labour market, including non-standard workers and the self-employed, but also women and low-paid workers, are experiencing significant losses in relation to work, working hours and/or wages. Even once the pandemic is contained, its impact will continue to be felt by many communities, workers, and families for months and years to come."