Differentiations in structures of employees' resources: a comparison of eight European countries

Using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), the research presented in this paper analyses structures of employees’ incomes, how they differ across countries, how they are related to socio-economics characteristics of employees, and how they have evolved over the last decade. Section 1 reviews the main recent research in different disciplines related to the study of the linkages between employment and social protection. It highlights the relevance of analysing the structure of income, arguing that instituted forms of resources flows matter in the definition of employment status and social rights. The main hypothesis is that the nature of resources could be related to processes of labour market segmentation and social differentiation and used as an analyser of changes in employment and social rights.Section 2 presents the dataset and methodology used in the analysis of employees’ structure of income. The use of the European Household Panel (ECHP) enabled to compare data for eight European countries and between two dates in the 1990s referring to income structure and socio-economic characteristics of employees. Section 3 presents the main results of the cross-sectional analysis of income structure. It displays classification of countries and examine differentiations across social groups. It proposes some elements to interpret national configurations of employees’ income structure in relation with trends over labour markets and social policies in the different countries.