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 society's 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. The book's contributions 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 and/or women; the pension outcomes of former cross-border workers; the simulated consequences of a recent pension benefit reform, as well as those of a potential reform, including financial assets and housing wealth in old-age income protection; and finally, the extent (and possible erosion) of the support for government providing child-care and protecting the elderly. The book is dedicated to the memory of KU Leuven's Professor Jos Berghman (1949-2014). *** Empirical research, as it is presented in this book's 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, KU Leuven (Series: Social Europe - Vol. 34) Subject: European Law, Social Welfare Law, Social Policy, Politics]