Family Change, Employment Transitions, and the Welfare State: Household Income Dynamics in the United States and Germany

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Sociological Review.Since the demise of modernization theory, social scientists have sought explanations for persisting differences in the stratification of industrialized societies, primarily by studying how educational and labor market institutions shape the life chances of individuals. This approach undervalues two key features of any stratification system: family dynamics and the welfare state. Employment changes, changes in household composition, and changes in the employment situation of a spouse or partner can all trigger large shifts in income and material well-being. The impact of these events is mediated by public tax and transfer mechanisms and by private actions taken by household members. This comparative analysis of household income dynamics in the United States and Germany shows that variations in welfare state policy produce distinct societal patterns of income mobility, and furthermore, shows that the relative importance of labor market events, family change, and welfare state policies for income dynamics depends on gender The strong interrelationship between individual incentives and the structure of opportunity produces an asymmetry in the long-term impact of events. The negative effects of events that reduce income generally decay over time, while the effects of positive events generally persist. I t was once common to presume that a family's standard of living could be derived from the class position of a single breadwinner, whether the male householder (Goldthorpe 1983) or more generally (in Erikson's "dominance model") the adult with the highest occupational status (Erikson 1984;S0rensen 1994). In effect, the conventional and dominance models both assume that the occupational status of the dominant breadwinner is an adequate measure of the economic position of all family members via its link with long-run (so-called "permanent") income (Friedman 1957). This approach is increasingly becoming obsolete. First, while occupation may be a reasonable measure of "permanent" individual income, it does not adequately measure "permanent" household income because it fails to capture the work activity of other adults in the household (Szelenyi 1994). Second, occupationftir Wirtschaftsforschung and the Center for Demography

Unemployment scarring by gender: Human capital depreciation or stigmatization? Longitudinal evidence from the Netherlands, 1980–2000

“…Early unemployment has been found detrimental for workers' future employment opportunities because it reduces the future likelihood to be hired, and inflicts a setback in re-employment wages that perpetuates long after the initial unemployment occurrence (Arulampalam, 2001;DiPrete, 1981;DiPrete and McManus, 2000;Gangl, 2004Gangl, , 2006Gregg, 2001;Jacobson et al, 1993;Kuhn, 2002;Moore, 2010;Ruhm, 1991). This wage setback is referred to in the literature as 'unemployment scarring'.…”

Modelling of Income Distribution of Czech Households in The Years 1996-2005

“…Contemporary research aims in particular at analysis of the income development dynamics, its stability, and detection of important factors affecting the income levels. Some works concentrated on the description of income development dynamics are Paap andvan Dijk (1998), Di Prete andMcManus (2000); its stability in EU countries is considered in Longford and Pittau (2006). The articles by Kneip and Utikal (2001), and Pittau (2004) focus on identification of the most influential factors and regional diversities in the EU.…”

Life Course Risks, Mobility Regimes, and Mobility Consequences: A Comparison of Sweden, Germany, and the U.S.

“…Results from DiPrete and McManus (2000) show that German women tend to recover faster than American women from union dissolution, though this recovery is from a more negative position, and only allows German women to achieve parity with American women after several years (table 4, rows 5a, 5b, 5c, and 5d). Results from Ruspini (1998) suggest that German women do not repartner as fast as Swedish women (table 4, row 6).…”

“…DiPrete and McManus (2000) found that the mean loss two years after a union dissolution in adjusted (for household size) household income was 25% for American women, and 32% for western German women. Here I instead use the above simulation to estimate the impact of union dissolution on entry into poverty, defined in the conventional (for international comparisons) way as 50% of the median income of a society.…”

“…35 See DiPrete and McManus (2000) for evidence on these issues in connection with the German and American cases. Featherman and Hauser (1978), Appendix E. , the SOEP for western Germany (1983-86), and the PSID for the U.S. .…”