Wiemer Salverda initiated the LoWER network in 1995 to bring together Europe's leading scholars on low pay and earnings inequality. With the help of the European Community's research funding, the network has been a prolific organizer of meetings and a fertile producer of publications. Moving from the University of Groningen's Economics Faculty he joined the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies of the University of Amsterdam in 2000, where he helped build an extensive portfolio of international research and research cooperation. He provides expert advice on low pay, wage inequality, the minimum wage, youth labour, older workers, employment policy, and labour market reform to the EU, OECD, ILO and the British Low Pay Commission. He chairs the Supervisory Board of the international WageIndicator which offers internet surveying of pay in many countries. Brian Nolan is Professor of Public Policy in the School of Applied Social Science, UCD, Dublin. His research focuses on poverty, income inequality, the economics of social policy, and health economics, and recent publications include studies on social inclusion in the EU, equity in health service use, long-term trends in top incomes, child poverty, deprivation and multiple disadvantage, tax/welfare reform, and the minimum wage. Timothy M. Smeeding is Distinguished Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University where he is also the founding director of the Center for Policy Research. He the Founder and Director Emeritus of the Luxembourg Income Study Project , which he began in 1983. His primary research focuses on national and cross-national comparisons of income and wealth inequality, social mobility, and poverty among vulnerable groups, including low-wage workers, children, the aged, and the disabled. He is spending the 2007-2008 academic year as a Visiting Fellow in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York where he is examining cross-national paterns of economic mobility.