Eric Crettaz

TL;DR: The authors provides an in-depth analysis of the working poor phenomenon and its causes across welfare regimes, and identifies the most efficient policy mixes and best practices that could be utilized to resolve this problem.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a meta-analytical approach to find out what works where, and for whom, and the weight of each working poverty mechanism across welfare regimes.

TL;DR: The notion of the working poor is frequently used in public debates, but it refers to a great variety of different profiles and situations, and to classify them in the same category may obscure some important aspects of the problem.

Abstract: The objective of this article is to distinguish between different types of working poverty, on the basis of the mechanisms that produce it. Whereas the poverty literature identifies a myriad of risk factors and of categories of disadvantaged workers, we focus on three immediate causes of in-work poverty, namely low remuneration rate, weak labor force attachment, and high needs, the latter mainly due to the presence of children (and sometimes to the increase in needs caused by a family breakup). These three mechanisms are the channels through which macroeconomic, demographic and policy factors have a direct bearing on working households. The main assumption tested here is that welfare regimes strongly influence the relative weight of these three mechanisms in producing working poverty. Our figures confirm this hypothesis and show that low-wage employment is a key factor but, by far, not the only one, and that family policies broadly understood play a decisive role, as well as patterns of labour market participation and integration.