Sustainable development has become a major policy goal over recent decades, but this goal is still very often seen as conflicting with traditional economic and social policy goals. More recently, the cost of climate change has received more attention and an economic case for sustainable development has been made. Investigations on the links between social policy goals andsustainable development, by contrast, are still in their infancy, except perhaps for the potential of 'green' jobs.Recognising the knowledge gap on the linkages between social policy objectives and sustainable development, in 2006 the European Commission initiated a major study based on the following three research questions: