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

Jan Paul Heisig

in EconStor Books from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

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.

Keywords: welfare state change; older workers; retirement; Germany; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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).
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/179003/1/d ... -Heisig-Risks-v3.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esmono:179003

DOI: 10.26530/OAPEN_621791

Access Statistics for this book

More books in EconStor Books from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().