IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/zbw/esmono/179003.html
   My bibliography  Save this book

Late-career Risks in Changing Welfare States: Comparing Germany and the United States since the 1980s

Author

Listed:
  • Heisig, Jan Paul

Abstract

Motivated by debates about welfare state retrenchment and growing economic insecurity, this book takes a closer look at the situation of older workers in Germany and the US. It first provides an in-depth account of country differences in key social programs - and of crucial changes since the 1980s. To better understand the impact of these changes on the lives of ordinary citizens, the second part of the book uses household panel data to examine the changing financial consequences of late-career job loss and retirement. Income losses due to men's retirement have grown in both countries, consistent with gradual declines in the generosity of public pension schemes and other public programs. In the US, income trajectories have also become more heterogeneous, with more workers suffering very large income losses and having low income after retirement. Changes in employer-sponsored pensions, in particular the rise of defined-contribution plans, appear to have been a major factor behind this trend. In Germany, where generous early retirement options were phased out after the mid-1990s, there is evidence that workers are paying a growing price for late-career job loss or health problems, which often lead to involuntary early retirement.

Suggested Citation

  • Heisig, Jan Paul, 2015. "Late-career Risks in Changing Welfare States: Comparing Germany and the United States since the 1980s," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 179003, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esmono:179003
    DOI: 10.26530/OAPEN_621791
    Note: Zugleich: Berlin, Freie Universität, Dissertation, 2013. Work on this book was partly conducted within a research project funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Grant # KO 2239/2). Publication was financially supported by the wzb Berlin Social Science Center (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung).
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/179003/1/ds-108941-full-text-Heisig-Risks-v3.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.26530/OAPEN_621791?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Heisig, Jan Paul & Solga, Heike, 2015. "Secondary Education Systems and the General Skills of Less- and Intermediate-educated Adults: A Comparison of 18 Countries," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 88(3), pages 202-225.
    2. Mäcken, Jana & Präg, Patrick & Hess, Moritz & Ellwardt, Lea, 2020. "Educational Inequalities in Labor Market Exit of Older Workers in 15 European Countries," SocArXiv gdtcp, Center for Open Science.
    3. Hübgen, Sabine, 2020. "Understanding lone mothers’ high poverty in Germany: Disentangling composition effects and effects of lone motherhood," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 44, pages 1-1.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:esmono:179003. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.