Income Mobility in Old Age in Britain and Germany

The increases in human longevity in recent decades and the trends for early retirement have posed new challenges for policy makers, and require a holistic understanding of the processes that influence the economic resources of older people. This paper contributes to this knowledge by examining the income mobility experienced by older people living in Britain and Germany during the 1990s, and by identifying personal attributes and life-course events that influenced its direction and likelihood. The analysis uses the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) panel data. The comparative perspective yields insights about the different income experience of older people in the two markedly different welfare regimes. Results show that old-age income mobility is more pronounced in Britain than in Germany, and that in both countries its occurrence is particularly associated with changes in living arrangements, in the employment status of the co-resident family members and with widowhood among women. Unemployment during working life is also associated with significant negative later life income mobility. Among those on low incomes, a high share of income from an earnings-related pension had a significant and positive effect in both countries. One policy implication is the need to strengthen the social safety net, to safeguard against downward income mobility in old age, particularly among widows. Policy incentives are required to encourage flexible living arrangements in old age, as well as a greater protection from unemployment during working life, more so in Germany than in Britain.income mobility, old age, pensions, Britain and Germany

A stalled revolution? What can we learn from women’s drop-out to part-time jobs: A comparative analysis of Germany and the UK

This study examines how within-couple inequalities, that is power differences between men and women in a partnership, act as predictors of transitions from full-time to part-time employment applying Heckman corrected probit models in three different institutional and cultural contexts; Eastern Germany, Western Germany and the United Kingdom. The analyses show that when women are in a weaker position within their relationships they are more likely to drop-out of full-time work, but that this propensity varies by context. The authors also find an increased tendency over time for women to leave full-time for part-time employment in both Eastern and Western Germany, but observe no such trend in the UK. This is suggestive of ongoing incompatibilities in the institutional support for equality in dual-earning in Germany. The study uses longitudinal data covering the period 1992 until 2012 from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for Germany and from the British Household Panel (BHPS) and the ‘Understanding Society’ data for the UK

Recent evolution of poverty in the European countries

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution of poverty in the 15 countries of E.U., whose household income data is available through the information contained in the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Several indicators have been proposed in economic literature for measuring poverty, but they may produce different orderings when cases are compared. In this work, a set of poverty one-dimensional indicators are chosen, which best verify some desirable properties. A modification of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is proposed to calculate synthetic cross-sectional measures of poverty using this set of indicators. In order to obtain comparable values throughout time, in addition to cross-sectional sense, joint consideration of single poverty indicators is proposed, independently of their temporary period of reference. Therefore, applying common space analysis to these cross-sectional synthetic measures, a common frame of comparison and a homogeneous weighting structure are obtained, which are stable throughout time. This powerful tool allows static as well as dynamic comparisons, among the EU countries. Furthermore, the determination of groups of countries according to their characteristics in poverty will be accomplished.

Trends in Parliamentary Oversight: Proceedings from a Panel at the 2004 Southern Political Science Association Conference

World Bank Institute Working Paper- Series on Contemporary Issues in Parliamentary Development, Washington D

The Dynamics of Child Poverty: Britain and Germany Compared

We compare patterns of movements into and out of poverty by children in Britain and Germany using data from the British Household Panel Survey and the German Socio- Economic Panel for the period 1992-7. Compared to Germany, in Britain poverty persistence is greater, and poverty exit rates in particular are lower. In both countries poverty is particularly persistent among children in lone parent households and households with a nonworking head. Events such as family formation and dissolution, and changes in household labour market attachment are associated with child poverty transitions in the direction expected, and in both countries. However a large fraction of the observed poverty transitions are not accounted for by these events.

Household composition across the new Europe: Where do the new Member States fit in?

In this paper we present indicators of household structure for 26 of the 27 countries of the post-enlargement European Union. As well as broad indicators of household type, we present statistics on single-person and extended-family households, and on the households of children and older people. Our main aim is to assess the extent to which household structure differs between the "old" and "new" Member States of the European Union. We find that most of the Eastern European countries may be thought of as lying on the same North-North-Western-Southern continuum defined for the "old" EU Member States, and constituting an "extreme form" of the Southern European model of living arrangements, which we term the "Eastern" model. However, the Baltic states do not fit easily onto this continuum

Testing the ‘residential rootedness’ hypothesis of self-employment for Germany and the UK

The work on this paper was funded by a Marie Curie grant from the European Commission within the 7th Framework Program (ID 252752).Based on the notion that entrepreneurship is a ‘local event’, the literature argues that entrepreneurs are ‘rooted’ in place. This paper tests the ‘residential rootedness’‒hypothesis of self-employment by examining for Germany and the UK whether the self-employed are less likely to move over long distances (internal migration) than workers in paid employment. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and accounting for transitions in employment status we found little evidence that the self-employed in Germany and the UK are more rooted in place than workers in paid employment. Generally speaking, the self-employed were not less likely than workers in paid employment to migrate over longer distance. In contrast to the residential rootedness–hypothesis we found that an entry into self-employment and female self-employment are associated with internal migration, and that the self-employed who work from home (home-based businesses) are fairly geographically mobile. The gendered results suggest that women might use self-employment as a strategy to be spatially mobile with their household, or as a strategy to stay in the workforce after having moved residence until they find a job in the more secure wage and salary sector.PostprintPeer reviewe

How Have Employment Transitions for Older Workers in Germany and the UK Changed?

Extending working life is an objective for many nations. However, the UK government has recently reported only modest improvement "compared to many nations". A comparison of European, Labour Force Surveys show that Germany has reversed early retirement much faster than the UK since 2003. This was not forecast by previous researchers. In particular, Ebbinghaus' influential cross-national analysis of early retirement, published in 2006, had predicted that liberal welfare states regimes like the UK would react faster than conservative ones like Germany. A review of changes to pensions and employment policies suggests the UK puts more emphasis on recruitment of older workers, flexible working and gradual retirement while Germany puts more emphasis on retention of older workers through age-management and employment protection. The paper compares the employment transitions of older workers using data covering 1993 to 2013 from the longitudinal surveys British Household Panel Survey, Understanding Society and the German Socio-Economic Panel. It finds little evidence for the recruitment of older workers or gradual retirement in either the UK or Germany and concludes it was the greater employment protection for older workers in Germany that enabled the employment rate for older workers to increase even during the recent recession

Right to life – European Convention on Human Rights

Paul and Audrey Edwards v. The United Kingdom(2002) 35 EHRR 19European Court of Human RightsChamber composed of Mr Cabral Barreto (President), Sir Nicolas Bratza, Mr Caflisch,Mr Kuris, Mr Türmen, Mrs Greve and Mr Traja.Judgment 14 March 2002, Application number 46477/9