Introduction

Abstract

This book is the outcome of a collective research project undertaken within the Framework of the European Network of Excellence RECWOWE (Reconciling Work and Welfare in Europe). Editors and authors have been concerned to follow a clear pattern of increasing integration of research partners and activities. After an initial period of activity devoted to the completion of a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey on the tension between quantity and quality of work, in-work poverty (IWP) was seen as one specific and relevant dimension (Guillén, Gutiérrez and Peña-Casas, 2009). A second task was aimed at selecting and integrating research on five country cases - Spain, France, United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland - analysing in detail the relative performance of the country concerned on the basis of previous comparative analysis, with a special focus on the role of institutional and policy factors. In a third task the research focus was expanded to highlight specific factors of IWP, such as the influence of tax and benefit policies, on the persistence and dynamics of in-work poverty, on wage inequalities and household characteristics, on the gender dimension of in-work poverty, on migrants and in-work poverty.