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The book provides a panoramic approach to social exclusion, with emphasis on structural causes (education, health, accidents) and on short term causes connected with the crisis which started in 2008. The picture emerging, based on econometric analysis, is that the crisis has widened the risk of social exclusion, from the structural groups, like disabled people and formerly convicted people, to other groups, like the young, unemployed, low skilled workers and immigrants, in terms of income, poverty, health, unemployment, transition between occupational statuses, participation, leading to a widening of socio-economic duality. It has also been stressed the relevance of definitions of socio-economic outcomes for the evaluation of the crisis, and their consequences to define interventions to fight socio-economic effects of the economic downturn. The adequacy of welfare policies to cope with social exclusion, especially during a crisis, has been called into question.

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The structural and long term causes of social exclusion .- Groups structurally vulnerable to social exclusion .- Economic crisis, labour markets and social exclusion.

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Giuliana Parodi (Ph.D. York 1985) is professor of economic policy at the Faculty of Managerial Sciences, Università d´Annunzio, Pescara Chieti, Italy. Her research interests include the economics of disability, labour economics and the economics of e-learning. She was local coordinator of the WEB-ECON project, cofinanced by the European Commission, coordinated by the University of Trier, Germany, 2000-2002. She has co-organized several Conferences on the Economics of Disability. She has acted as referee for Applied Economics. She is a member of AIEL (Associazione Italiana degli Economisti del Lavoro).

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