This paper compares trends in wage inequality in the U.S. and Germany using an approach developed by MaCurdy and Mroz (1995) to separate age, time, and cohort effects. Between 1979 and 2004, wage inequality increased strongly in both the U.S. and Germany but there were various country specific...

The conventional approach to comparing tax progression (using local measures, global measures or dominance relations for first moment distribution functions) often lacks applicability to the real world: local measures of tax progression have the disadvantage of ignoring the income distribution...

Based on the earlier work of one of the authors, this paper develops a unified methodology to compare tax progression for dominance relations under different income distributions. We address it as uniform tax progression for different income distributions and present the respective approach for...

The aim is to assess the prevalence of poverty among families receiving social assistance. We will examine the incidence of poverty among the recipients in relation to the general poverty profile. To answer these questions, the adequacy and poverty reduction effectiveness of social assistance...

This study explores the plausibility of extending research on income inequality to incorporate relative living standards based on household head's industry of employment. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study is used to assess the relative level and movement of per capita disposable household...

This paper is the first to analyze intergenerational economic mobility based on sibling correlations in permanent earnings in Germany and to provide a cross-country comparison of Germany, Denmark, and the US. The main findings are as follows: the importance of family and community background in...

A bottom-line of the interest in welfare state programs and cross-national variations in the pattern, size and structure of various social policies, is that we expect that the welfare state is an institution that greatly affects our lives and well-being. A further assumption is that this impact...

Few works more than Esping-Andersen's 'Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism' have drawn researchers' attention on institutional features that characterize the diverse typologies of welfare regimes; yet the impact of the different institutional settings on income distribution has mostly been taken...

Within the OECD, there are significant differences in the trend and level of average work hours. [For example, from 1980 to 2000, average working hours per adult (ages 15-64) rose by 234 hours in the USA to 1476 while falling by 170 hours in Germany, to 973]. Since these trends appear to be...