The current retrenchment of the welfare states is buffering the growing demographic and economic pressures in European countries at the expense of the young and the elderly. However both investment in the young which determines a societys future and providing public support for the elderly the most deserving needy group are seen as musts. This book encompasses a selection of empirical studies reflecting on when and why the young and the elderly are at risk in several mostly Western European countries. Contributions in the book examine the educational achievement and the labor market entry of youths particularly those who have a migration background the poverty risk experienced by the elderly especially if they are also immigrants andor women the pension outcomes of former crossborder workers the simulated consequeces of a recent pension benefit reform as well as those of a potential reform including financial assets and housing wealth in oldage income protection and finally the extent and possible erosion of the support for government providing childcare and protecting the elderly. Empirical research as it is presented in this books contributions can add much to our understanding of how this social contract and by extension also others like the social contracts between the active and inactive the healthy and the sick and the rich and the poor can be sustained economically politically as well as socially.Wim van Oorschot Professor of Social Policy at KU Leuven and Honorary President of ESPAnet show more