Changing middle class: A comparison of Germany and the US

近年来，许多经济学和社会学研究已经诊断出，德国和美国的中产阶级正在空心化。这些实证研究结果引起了广泛的公众共鸣，因此引起了极大的政治关注。然而，对当前实证文献的回顾发现了有关中产阶级发展的相互矛盾的发现，质疑德国和美国中产阶级正在萎缩的结论。本研究项目的目的是应用以收入和阶级为基础以及中产阶级的多维定义来评估自德国和美国铁幕倒塌以来中产阶级的变化程度，是否有更多的代际向上流动而不是向下流动进入和离开中产阶级，以及劳动力市场，女性就业和家庭构成的变化是否影响了这些过程。对于我们的跨国比较方法，我们依赖于德国社会经济小组（SOEP）和美国收入动态小组研究（PSID）的纵向家庭数据。

In recent years, many economic and sociological studies have diagnosed that the German and US middle class is hollowing out. These empirical findings have generated a wide public resonance and are therefore of great political concern. However, a review of the current empirical literature identifies contradicting findings on the development of the middle class, questioning the conclusion that the middle class is shrinking in Germany and the US. The aim of this research project is to apply an income- and class-based as well as a multidimensional definition of the middle class to evaluate how far the middle class has changed since the Fall of the Iron Curtain in Germany and the US, whether there has been more intragenerational upward than downward mobility into and from the middle class, and whether changes on the labour market, female employment and family composition have influenced these processes. For our cross-national comparative approach, we rely on longitudinal household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the American Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).