A research team at ISER has begun work on a new innovative cross-national project that examines people’s life chances across the ‘new Europe’.
Analysis of Life Chances in Europe or ALICE combines substantive research on incomes, poverty, work and family formation with work on cross-national research methodology.
The £400,000 project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and led by Richard Berthoud and Maria Iacovou, involves about a dozen researchers, most based at ISER, but some visiting ISER in order to take part.
Although most existing cross-national research on Europe has been based on the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) which carries data on 15 Western and Southern European countries, ALICE will make use of its successor, the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), which covers all 27 countries of the newly enlarged EU. The research will also make use of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and EUROMOD, a purpose-built tax-benefit simulation programme developed by ISER colleagues.
Maria Iacovou said:
“While the pre-enlargement EU-15 states have been extensively studied, the new member states, most of which are in Central and Eastern Europe, have received much less attention. ALICE provides a unique opportunity to explore and compare the unique conditions prevailing in these so-called transition economies.”
Some preliminary work already undertaken by the ALICE team has made some interesting findings. Maria explained: “Early indications are that the old Eastern bloc countries differ systematically from other European countries. This initial research shows that across most of Europe, there is an inverse relationship between incomes and relative poverty, in other words countries with high per capita incomes are less unequal than countries where incomes are low. However, it appears that some Eastern European countries buck this trend: many have relatively low rates of poverty and inequality, in spite of low average incomes overall.