ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at empirical evidence about the link between employment rates and poverty, and reviews historical trends in Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as cross-country comparative results. It discusses the policy implications of these findings for national welfare states. The chapter examines what way the European Union might play a useful role. A comparison between households within a particular country at a point in time suggests that employment significantly reduces the poverty risk. The principal reason for the enormous drop in poverty was an increase in the relative welfare of the elderly. But poverty levels declined among people of working age, from 4.5 percent in 1976 to 2.4 percent in 1988. Unemployment is generally regarded to be one of the principal causes of poverty; comparative international research has shown that there is not at all a linear relation between unemployment and poverty.
