The European and Portuguese labour markets have undergone significant changes in recent years. The high rates of unemployment have been accompanied by precarious employment-a phenomenon that is affecting younger people most. This article analyses how the future employment prospects of young people with few qualifications and/or on low pay are both represented and projected. By means of a content analysis of 80 interviews with young working people in Portugal, two forms of projecting their professional future were defined: the cumulative and the noncumulative projections. Within the latter category, three subtypes were identified: those of contingency, immobility and rupture. These categories are systematically explained, taking into account the notion of time as a sociological variable.
The aim of this article is to analyse the structural changes and continuities in Portuguese society over the two decades from 1988-2008. Although modernisation processes have intensified, the country still has a highly polarised social structure. This study included a multiple correspondence analysis and a cluster analysis, using sociological variables collected in a national database that covers all Portuguese companies. Developing this approach made it possible to not only produce different sociological profiles of social and class inequality, but also compare the structural changes in the labour force in these two decades (private sector). The study shows that although the space of social positions was mainly formed by three large socioprofessional groups in both 1988 and 2008, their size and social composition changed, reflecting the social and economic trends experienced by Portuguese society in this period.
The rise of economic inequality in the past few decades is one of the most relevant phenomena in western countries recent history. Market income distribution pushed inequality up and challenged welfare state capacity to deal with economic gaps. Market inequality or gross income inequality are considerably higher than disposable income inequality. This has to do with redistributive state policies. This paper analyses gross income inequality in the EU countries and measure the impact of personal taxes on income distribution. Several measures of redistributive tax impact on income inequality will be explored. Having in consideration both the level of gross income inequality and the impact of personal taxes on top shares, a typology of income distribution and redistribution in Europe will be drawn.
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