The present thesis examines the extent of poverty and welfare in Switzerland from a multidimensional perspective, using data from the Swiss Household Panel 1999-2007, a period of major economic and social changes in Switzerland. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first two chapters examine the levels of deprivation and social exclusion, and their association to income poverty. The third chapter looks at the potential effects of income and multidimensional poverty on health status, with a focus on mental health. In this case, an instrumental variable method is used in order to take into account the endogeneity of explanatory variables. The last chapter provides a distributional analysis of earnings in Switzerland by examining the extent of inequality and polarization, and providing a decomposition analysis by socio-economic subgroups.