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When developing anti-poverty policies, policy makers need accurate data on the prevalence of poverty. In this paper, we focus on subjective poverty, a concept which has been largely neglected in literature, yet remains a conceptually appealing way to define poverty. The primary goal of this study is to re-examine the concept of subjective poverty measurement and to estimate trends in subjective poverty rates in the European Union. Our estimations are based on a minimum income question using data from a representative survey, EU-SILC, and we find a decreasing trend in subjective poverty in 16 of 28 countries. Conversely, the official relative income poverty indicator exhibits increasing trends in eleven countries, with decreasing trends in only four countries. We believe that these trends may reflect changes in societies which have not been previously captured, and our results thus enrich the existing data on general poverty trends in the EU.

Empirical literature offers a number of studies suggesting that living conditions in childhood can significantly influence achievements and living conditions in adulthood. The aim of this paper is to answer the question: To what extent is the intergenerational transmission of poverty associated with social mobility (in terms of educational and occupational intergenerational mobility) in the European Union (and Iceland, Switzerland and Norway)? Our analyses are based on EU-SILC 2011, ‘Intergenerational transmission of disadvantages’ module microdata. Interpretations of the findings are based on the ordered logit models estimated at European and country levels. The results suggest that both educational and occupational mobility are in a statistically significant positive relationship with the intergenerational transmission of poverty (proxied by a change in the perceived financial stress of the household).

This paper contributes to the debate about the impact of the transition to subjective well-being. After reviewing the relevant literature the authors draw on the surveys of the European Values Study between 1991 and 2008 to describe the trends in life satisfaction in 13 "Western" and 11 "Eastern" countries. The analysis finds that life satisfaction levels in transition countries have come to approach those in the West: the "rather unhappy" 1990s were followed by the "rather happy" 2000s. The correlation between life satisfaction and GDP reflects this process of convergence: the two separate lines in 1991 merge to become a single continuum later on. The characteristics of respondents are however more important than GDP, and a regression of life satisfactions with basic demographic and stratification variables shows their reinforcing effect in both Eastern and Western countries. As a result, the explained variance of life satisfaction was increasing. The findings of other surveys reporting on developments of attitudes since 2008 vary but are far from proving a uniform negative impact of economic recession on life satisfaction. The paper concludes by suggesting that various surveys have to be compared in order to obtain more reliable information on the development and factors of subjective well-being.

This thesis adopts three stepwise perspectives to look at earnings inequality. It applies Czech data from two surveys, Microcensus and Living Conditions, covering the period 1988-2008, and European dataset EU-SILC 2008 and 2009 for international comparisons. The first essay "Personal Earnings Inequality" analyzes personal earnings distribution in the Czech Republic since the early transition from communism, using relative distribution method. The trend of "hollowing of the middle" was confirmed in the early transition, but this phenomenon later subsided. Earnings polarization was apparent for all sex and education subgroups between 1988 and 1996. In international comparison, earnings of men and highly educated are more homogenous than earnings of their counterparts in most analyzed countries. The second essay "Gender Wage Gap" quantifies the structure of gender wage gaps in four Central-East European countries (CEE), using the Heckman regression model and Oaxaca- Blinder decomposition. The observed gender wage gap is substantially higher in the Czech Republic and Slovakia than in Hungary and Poland. A relatively small but positive part of the observed gender wage gap can be explained by gender differences in characteristics in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with a high contribution of job...

We analyze labor market flows and unemployment in the Czech Republic (CR), Slovakia and Poland over the period 2004-2007. Relative involvement of working-age population in gross labor market flows is approximately five times lower in central Europe than in the U.S. /UK. Yet, compared to neighboring countries, the CR suffers more from unemployment rigidity, as evidenced most convincingly by a relatively weakernet flowof workers from unemployment to employment. This net flow alone would cut the unemployment rate in Poland more than twice as fast as in the CR. The CR lags behind in creating jobs forthe unemployed, particularly for men, individuals with primary education, and for the 55-65 age group.

The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) set of surveys are an important source of comparative statistical data. EU-SILC provides data on income, living conditions, poverty and social exclusion, material deprivation: topics of growing interest to scholars in Europe and elsewhere. EU-SILC surveys are fielded in 29 European countries and coordinated by Eurostat. Although the survey is harmonised, the individual level microdata consists of many dissimilarities across participating countries because of different national conditions, methods of data collection and/or data processing. The aim of this article is to discuss the opportunities and limitations of EU-SILC datasets. In addition to discussing the development, methodology and basic pitfalls of EU-SILC, this article focuses on (a) income variables, (b) differences in income among countries and (c) impact of income differentials on data comparability. The main problems of income data may be summarised as follows. 1) Some countries use registers to report income variables while others obtain this information from interviews, and this difference lowers their comparability. 2) The incidence of negative or zero values makes the construction of poverty and inequality measures difficult. 3) There are national differences in the net-to-gross income conversion procedure. This study shows using a four country analysis that the net-to-gross conversion procedure overestimates gross wages in two countries and underestimates it in two others. Notwithstanding these methodological issues, EU-SILC is an important resource for the comparative study of income.

This study analyses the income distribution within couples in the Czech Republic and ten European countries using the EU-SILC 2005 database. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database supplement the analysis with previous period (1986 - 2000). Women, on average, contribute less to a couple's income than men. Among the included countries, within-couple income inequality tends to be lower in the new EU member states than in the old ones, with the Czech Republic being the exception. Within-couple income inequality has two crucial factors: employment of female partners and, subsequently, their wages. In the context of the first, the inter-generational transmission of the traditional model of the family proved to have a significant negative impact on the female employment decision mainly in the old EU member states. Finally, gender wage gaps between men and women who live in a couple were examined and compared with the gender wage gaps for single individuals. The gender wage gap proved to be higher for cohabiting individuals than for singles even after adjusting for gender differences in individual and job characteristics.

This paper analyzes the inequality of personal earnings in the Czech Republic since the early transition from communism, using relative distribution method. It applies data from two surveys, Microcensus and Living Conditions, covering the period from 1988 to 2008. The trend suggested by many recent empirics, hollowing of the middle, was confirmed in the early stages of transition, but later subsided. Earnings polarization was apparent for all sex and education subgroups between the years 1988 and 1996. For international comparison the European dataset EU-SILC 2008 has been used, focusing on four countries: Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Poland. Earnings distributions by gender and education have been analyzed, establishing that male earnings distribution is more homogenous than female, and earnings of highly educated people are more concentrated in the middle than earnings of less educated people.

This paper aims to quantify the impact of the minimum wage on labour market performance in the Czech Republic. Using regional data for 1995-2004, it estimates the effect of the minimum wage adjusted for regional wage differential on the regional unemployment. Consequently, using detail individual data from 2004/2005, we analyze the annual hikes in the minimum wage that allow us to estimate employment probabilities for workers with wage level at, or close to, the new minimum wage. The aim is to reveal whether the most endangered groups of workers exhibited significantly different employment probabilities. Our results reveal that the minimum wage has had a significant impact on increasing regional unemployment and reducing the employment probabilities of low-paid workers.

This paper aims to quantify the impact of social benefits on labor market participation in the Czech Republic. It applies the logistic regression to estimate the probability of labor market participation depending on social benefits related to net wage of the individuals, controlling for individual and household characteristics (age, presence of spouse and children etc.). The work disincentives via social benefits do exist and proved to be relatively strong. When trying to understand the reasons for recently decreasing participation rate in the Czech Republic, the often called generous Czech social benefit system appears to be relevant.

Employment or, more precisely, participation of women on the labor market is one of the most apparent gender inequalities on the labor market. Economic theories explaining the segregation can be divided into three broader categories: neo-classic and human capital theories, theory of discrimination and finally institutional theory and labor market segmentation theory. The elimination of causes of these inequalities by appropriate policies implementation would help the better use of women working potential and the higher labor market effectivity. There are applied several policies in the Czech Republic which not only does not support the female participation but have rather negative influence. In this study, I investigate the impact of the two policy means, which can negatively influence the labor supply of women in the Czech Republic. First, joint taxation of spouses was enabled. The marginal tax-rate of women increases very often in case of profiting spouses; women might therefore lower their labor supply. Second, the system of the parental leave influences the female participation. The current Czech system can create significant barrier to women in entry and return to the labor market. Therefore, it leads to an excessive loss of the women human capital which markedly lowers their further employability.

Problems of women labor market is currently one of the most discussed issues. The member states of the European Union are supposed to perform an effort to increase female employment rate for which, namely the support of women's participation, is needed. In this study, I investigate the impact of the two policy means, which negatively influence the labor supply of women in the Czech Republic. First, joint taxation of spouses was enabled. The marginal tax-rate of women increases very often; women might therefore lower their labor supply. Second, the system of the parental leave influences the female participation. The current Czech system can create significant barrier to women in entry and return to the labor market. Therefore, it leads to an excessive loss of the women human capital. Better accessibility of part time jobs could ease the re-entry of women to the labor market. However, part-time work is also connected to various negative factors, especially the lower wages. The last part of my thesis analyzes the wage gap between the men and women. The decrease of the gender pay gap does not mean that the position of women has improved because it can be caused by participation lowering of women with potentially low wage. The pay gap consists of several components which stem not only from discrimination but...