Ilze Plavgo

Universität Mannheim · Department of Sociology

This book primarily explores the welfare policy responses to the Great Recession—reform trajectories that swept across Europe over the last decade–with a final chapter that focuses on Covid-19 welfare management. The 2008 crash marked a critical stress test for European welfare states with dramatic repercussions, including a massive surge in unempl...

The principal objective of this contribution is to assess the well-being returns of social investment welfare provision in a comparative European perspective. The overarching objective of social investment welfare provision is to enhance people’s opportunities and capabilities to resolve social risks typical of post-industrial societies ex-ante, by...

This article expands the scope of comparative social stratification research in education to rapidly developing, largely low-income sub-Saharan Africa. First, we investigate trends in the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and children’s chances to attend and complete primary education, exploring whether and where educational e...

This paper theorises and empirically assesses how education and active labour market policy (ALMP) relate to each other in shaping individuals' employment chances in Europe. It provides a theoretical base for assessing policy complementarities building on sociological skill‐formation literature, varieties of capitalism and social investment literat...

Welfare provision is often conceived through the lens of decommodification and analysed in (re)distributive terms. This article argues that a distributive approach does not sufficiently capture the complexity of 21st century welfare state dynamics. It proposes re-conceptualizing provision as a mix of three policy functions: raising and maintaining...

Social policy research is truly interdisciplinary with academics from very different theoretical perspectives working together in fervent open-mindedness towards diverse methodological approaches. The exploration of social investment (SI) welfare provision is a clear example of this spirit of interdisciplinary engagement, having stirred up critical...

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 has set out targets to improve learning quality and equity at all educational levels. A prerequisite for reaching these targets is to identify the sources and timing of inequality of educational opportunity (IEO). Drawing from the Young Lives Ethiopia longitudinal survey data, this chapter investigates the r...

Introduction Obtaining education is widely acknowledged to constitute one of the main starting conditions for later opportunities over the life course, regarded as a quintessential means to improve productivity, promote a healthy lifestyle, empower and increase civic participation, raise individual capabilities, and reduce intergenerational transmi...

Sustainable Human Development Across the Lifecourse brings together impactful findings that respond to the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 commitment to ‘leave no one behind’. Drawing together international longitudinal studies researching child and adolescent wellbeing in over 40 countries, contributors explore a wide range and complexity of pressing...

Over the past decade, the notion of ‘social investment’ (SI) has gained considerable traction in the political debates over welfare state futures. The multifaceted character of SI policy interventions, the effects of policy complementarities and interactions for different social groups and generational cohorts, and the challenge of delineating effe...

This study provides with a first indication on the number of multidimensionally poor children in sub-Saharan Africa. It presents a methodology measuring multidimensional child deprivation within and across countries, and it is in line with the Sustainable Development Goal 1 focusing on multidimensional poverty by age and gender. Using the Multiple...

Poverty has serious consequences for children’s well-being as well as for their achievements in adult life. The Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis for the European Union (EU-MODA) compares the living conditions of children across the EU member states. Rooted in the established multidimensional poverty measurement tradition, EU-MODA contribut...

Poverty has serious consequences for children’s well-being as well as for their achievements in adult life. The Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis for the European Union (EU-MODA) compares the living conditions of children across the EU member states, plus Iceland and Norway. Rooted in the established multidimensional poverty measurement tra...