Wiemer Salverda initiated the LoWER network in 1995 to bring together Europe's leading scholars on low pay and earnings inequality. With the help of the European Community's research funding, the network has been a prolific organizer of meetings and a fertile producer of publications. Moving from the University of Groningen's Economics Faculty he joined the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies of the University of Amsterdam in 2000, where he helped build an extensive portfolio of international research and research cooperation. He provides expert advice on low pay, wage inequality, the minimum wage, youth labour, older workers, employment policy, and labour market reform to the EU, OECD, ILO and the British Low Pay Commission. He chairs the Supervisory Board of the international WageIndicator which offers internet surveying of pay in many countries.

Brian Nolan is Professor of Public Policy in the School of Applied Social Science, UCD, Dublin. His research focuses on poverty, income inequality, the economics of social policy, and health economics, and recent publications include studies on social inclusion in the EU, equity in health service use, long-term trends in top incomes, child poverty, deprivation and multiple disadvantage, tax/welfare reform, and the minimum wage.

Timothy M. Smeeding is Distinguished Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University where he is also the founding director of the Center for Policy Research. He the Founder and Director Emeritus of the Luxembourg Income Study Project , which he began in 1983. His primary research focuses on national and cross-national comparisons of income and wealth inequality, social mobility, and poverty among vulnerable groups, including low-wage workers, children, the aged, and the disabled. He is spending the 2007-2008 academic year as a Visiting Fellow in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York where he is examining cross-national paterns of economic mobility.

• Part 1 Inequality: Overview, Concepts and Measurement


• 1: Wiemer Salverda, Brian Nolan and Timothy M. Smeeding: Introduction: The scope and worries of economic inequality


• 2: John E. Roemer: Concepts and theories of inequality


• 3: Stephen Jenkins and Philippe van Kerm: The measurement of economic inequality


• Part 2 The Extent of Inequality


• 4: Andrea Brandolini and Timothy M. Smeeding: Income inequality


• 5: Andrew Glyn: Functional and personal distribution


• 6: James B. Davies: Wealth and economic inequality


• 7: Andrew Leigh: High incomes and inequality


• Part 3 Earnings inequality


• 8: Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn: Inequality and earnings distribution


• 9: Julia Lane: Inequality and the labour market: employers


• 10: Jelle Visser and Daniele Checchi: Inequality and the labour market: unions


• 11: Claudio Lucifora and Wiemer Salverda: Low pay


• 12: Mary B. Gregory: Gender and economic inequality


• Part 4 Dimensions of inequality


• 13: Brian Nolan and Ive Marx: Inequality, poverty and exclusion


• 14: Nancy Folbre: Inequality, consumption and time use


• 15: Bernard van Praag and Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell: Inequality and happiness


• 16: Andrew Leigh, Christopher Jencks and Timothy M. Smeeding: Health and economic inequalities


• 17: Stephen Machin: Inequality and education


• Part 5 The Dynamics of Inequality


• 18: Gary Burtless: Demographic transformation and economic inequality


• 19: Klaus F. Zimmermann and Martin Kahanec: International migration, ethnicity and economic inequality


• 20: Anders Bjorklund and Markus Jäntti: Intergenerational economic inequality


• 21: Richard V. Burkhauser and Kenneth A. Couch: Intragenerational inequality and intertemporal mobility


• Part 6 Global perspectives on inequality


• 22: Sarah Voitchovsky: Inequality, growth and sectoral change


• 23: Richard B. Freeman: Trade, skills and globalization


• 24: Francisco H.G. Ferreira and Martin Ravallion: Poverty and Inequality: The Global Context


• Part 7 Can inequalities be changed?


• 25: Gøsta Esping-Andersen and John Myles: Economic inequality and the welfare state


• 26: Nolan McCarty and Jonas Pontusson: Inequality and policy making


• 27: John E. Roemer: Prospects for achieving equality in market economies