Andrea Ciarini is Associate Professor of Economic Sociology in the Department of Social and Economic Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. His research interests concern social policies and welfare systems from a comparative European perspective.

1.Introduction: Investments and social policies in the years of the crisis . 2.The social investment welfare state: what can it achieve? 3.Minimum income and active labour market policies. The traps of the work-first approaches. 4.Social policies and employment in personal care services. The working poor and services in times of austerity. 5.Social investment recovery for a resilient Eurozone. 6.Minimum income and working time in the pluri-active society.

This book focuses on the main institutional changes affecting the Social Investment approach, as the framework for the European social agenda.