ABSTRACT
It is becoming widely recognised that most of the literature on comparing welfare regimes - especially that which proposes typologies of welfare states - ignores (or at least underestimates) the differences evident among countries in the area of poverty policies. At the same time, such approaches have traditionally failed satisfactorily to incorporate the southern European countries. Four approaches can be detected in the literature:
• studies which focus mainly on inputs, that is, the demands (or needs) for action either inside or outside the political system and the resources allocated to the policy. Many studies rely on resources allocated to welfare provision, justified either by the fact that this indicates the welfare effort of a country or because it is the easiest way of getting statistical data. But ranking the countries on the basis of the percentage of government expenditure on social protection in GDP provides a very rough indication of how actual social protection is implemented - its coverage, redistributive impact, entitlements/ rights, how welfare provision is delivered, and so on.
