Unemployment and Poverty in the Contemporary Welfare States*

Abstract

All over Western Europe unemployment has for a considerable number of years been at a very high level, thus presenting social policy with increasing difficulties in securing satisfactory living conditions tor the long-term unem ployed Austerity programmes have generally reduced public financial trans fers to the unemployed. while at the same time the average duration of unemployment has increased sharply Therefore. the long-term unemployed experience increasing risks of poverty. partly because income replacements have declined and partly because the individual length of the period of unemployment has grown. At the University of Copenhagen a research project is being carried out with the aim of investigating which social mechanisms of segmentation and selection determine the poverty -careers' ot the long-term unemployed

Finally, the relationship between politics and poverty within the weltare state will be discussed.