This paper analyses the distributive impacts of various regulatory and institutional settings of European schemes of social assistance. For this purpose, two sets of classifications of European schemes of social assistance are introduced that classify the systems according to regulatory...

In this paper, the relationship between the degree of centralisation and the distributive outcomes in European schemes of social assistance is investigated. For this purpose, a scheme of classification suitable for grouping the EU15 schemes except for Luxembourg according to features related to...

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on the welfare state and on individual attitudes. The outcome variables that we cover in the survey are on the one hand public spending, and on the other hand individual attitudes and behaviour, including charity...

We study inter-temporal changes in poverty for Germany from year 1978 to 2003, and we employ the bootstrap method to test for statistical significance of results. All results are decomposed by household type and region. Poverty estimates are particularly high for single parents. Most striking,...

Using data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and from official statistics, I study whether natives are less supportive of state help for the unemployed in regions where the share of foreigners among the unemployed is high. Unlike previous studies, I use...

Many welfare schemes discourage low skilled individuals from working. In the same time, there is widespread support for the welfare state among the highly educated. We suggest a model which explains these seemingly contrasting observations. In our approach, intergenerational social mobility is...

Die zentrale Stoßrichtung dieses Beitrages ist es, Wege für eine erfolgreiche Familienpolitik aufzuzeigen. Basierend auf einem 16-Ländersample und unter Zuhilfenahme des neuen MVQCA-Ansatzes werden unterschiedliche europäische familienpolitische Regulierungsmuster multivariat untersucht. Die...

We study the problem of unemployment benefit provision when the family is also a provider of social insurance. As a benchmark, a simple model is presented where risksharing motives govern intra-family transfers and more generous unemployment benefits, provided by the State, crowd out family...

The German nursing home industry rapidly grows due to the permanent increase of people in need of long-term care, in particular. At the same time a large share of residents in German nursing homes is in need of social assistance. In a simple spatial competition model we show that the presence of...

Citizen's Income - an unconditional and nonwithdrawable income for every individual - would offer many advantages, but transition from the UK's current largely means-tested benefits system to one based on a Citizen's Income might generate initial losses for some low-income households, and this...