This compendium of four essays preceded by an introductory essay considers the question of the structure of social protection financing in the EU and EMU countries, countries
applying for membership in the EU and 18 member countries of the OECD.

Assuming that convergence of economic development is observed, does it follow that the structures of social protection financing are converging as well, or could the discrepancies in economic performance and in the financing structures of social protection be moving in different directions?

The second main issue considered in the essays is the classification of alternative financing models. Can we identify significantly different clusters of
countries when we use the main contributor financing shares as classifiers?

A method based on neural networks (the Self-Organizing Map) is used for clustering the financing structures of the main social insurance programmes in 18 OECD countries.