The Welfare State, the Labor Market, and the Stability of Family Income: A Comparison of the U.S. and Germany

福利国家、劳动力市场和家庭收入稳定性：美国和德国的比较

• 批准号: 9631944
• 负责人: Thomas DiPrete
• 金额: $ 9.64万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-08-01 至 1999-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9631944&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Welfare; State; Labor; Market; Stability

This is a study of the stability of family income in the United States and Germany. It compares the relative importance of labor market and welfare state institutions in accounting for or controlling temporal instability in living standards. A substantial body of research has arisen in recent years to assess the impact of rapid technological change and the globalization of markets on work careers, earnings, and the structure of inequality in society. It is now clear that the impact of structural change on these outcomes depends both on the institutional characteristics of labor markets and on state social welfare policy, and scholars have addressed a number of important aspects concerning these linkages. Two important issues, however, have received relatively little attention. First, little research has focused on the dynamics of family income as opposed to individual earnings. Second, little is known about the relative importance of labor market institutions, welfare state policies, and changes in family composition in creating or damping turbulence in the financial situation of families. A comparison of the United States and Germany will be valuable for three reasons. First, the institutional character of both Germany's labor markets and Germany's welfare state policies are quite different from those of the United States. Second, family structure is more stable in Germany than in the United States. Third, there exist high quality longitudinal data that allow comparable measures of the relevant variables for the two countries. The research utilizes data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and from the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure the level of fluctuation in overall family income and in its principal components (labor income, asset income, private transfers, taxes, and government transfers) for the period from 1983 until the very recent past. Fluctuation in these components of income and in overall income will be decomposed using standard methods, and the decomposition s for the United States and Germany will be compared in order to establish the amount of cross national differences, and the explanation for these differences. The findings will be valuable for several subdisciplines of sociology and economics, as well as for understanding the effect of government policies on families. This research addresses key questions concerning human capital, especially the ways that alternative labor market and welfare state institutions affect family income and well-being.

这是一项关于美国和德国家庭收入稳定性的研究。它比较了劳动力市场和福利国家制度在解释或控制生活水平暂时不稳定方面的相对重要性。近年来出现了大量的研究，以评估快速的技术变革和市场全球化对工作生涯、收入和社会不平等结构的影响。现在很清楚，结构性变化对这些结果的影响既取决于劳动力市场的制度特征，也取决于国家社会福利政策，学者们已经解决了有关这些联系的一些重要方面。然而，有两个重要问题得到的关注相对较少。首先，很少有研究关注家庭收入的动态，而不是个人收入。其次，人们对劳动力市场制度、福利国家政策和家庭构成变化在造成或抑制家庭财务状况动荡方面的相对重要性知之甚少。将美国和德国进行比较是有价值的，原因有三。首先，德国劳动力市场和福利国家政策的制度特征与美国有很大不同。第二，德国的家庭结构比美国更稳定。第三，存在高质量的纵向数据，可以对两国的相关变量进行比较。该研究利用收入动态小组研究和德国社会经济小组的数据来衡量1983年至最近期间家庭总收入及其主要组成部分（劳动收入、资产收入、私人转移、税收和政府转移）的波动水平。将使用标准方法对这些收入组成部分和总收入的波动进行分解，并对美国和德国的分解进行比较，以确定跨国差异的数量，以及对这些差异的解释。这些发现将对社会学和经济学的几个分支学科，以及对理解政府政策对家庭的影响有价值。本研究解决了人力资本的关键问题，特别是替代劳动力市场和福利国家制度对家庭收入和福祉的影响。