He was Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, until 1992 and then University Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University where he also directed the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy.

Since 1986, he has been an invited Senior Research Fellow at Statistics Canada, most recently from 2001-2007. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the European University Institute in Florence and the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

He is a graduate of the University of Ottawa (B.A., Philosophy), the Gregorian University, Rome (B.Th. , Theology), Carleton University (M.A., Sociology) and the University of Wisconsin, Madison (PHD, Sociology).

His first book, Old Age in the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Public Pensions (1984) was among the early contributions to the then emergent “power resource” tradition in comparative welfare state studies. He has continued to write on themes related to income security and public policy in Europe and North America. He collaborated with Gosta Esping-Andersen, Duncan Gallie and Anton Hemerijck on a report for the EU entitled Why We Need a New Welfare State published by Oxford University Press in 2002. He is co-author with Wallace Clement of Relations of Ruling: Class and Gender in Postindustrial Societies, recipient of the 1995 Innis Award for best book in Canadian social science.

With colleagues at Statistics Canada, he complements this program of macro-level, institutional, research with on ongoing program of micro-level, quantitative, analysis of income inequality and poverty. His publications in this field include studies of earnings inequality, child and old age poverty, and various methodological issues related to their measurement.