Markus Gangl
Biographic Data
| ID | 124237 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Markus Gangl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Markus |
| FAMILY NAME | Gangl |
| SIGNATURE | GANGL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goethe University Frankfurt |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5392-0079 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1084 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
The paradox of inequality that isn’t: Rising economic inequality depresses and polarizes citizens’ belief in meritocracy
This study examines how rising income inequality has been impacting individuals’ belief in merit-based success, using three decades of survey data from 39 advanced capitalist democracies. Challenging the seminal finding of a “paradox of inequality,” we find no evidence of a positive effect of inequality on meritocratic beliefs across countries. Instead, we identify a substantively moderate but robustly negative effect of inequality on perceptions…
Increasingly polarized? Inequality, prosperity, and perceived socioeconomic conflict in advanced economies (1987–2019)
Previous studies suggest that in more unequal societies, people perceive stronger antagonistic relations between opposing socioeconomic groups. Given that income inequality and social polarization have both been on the rise in most Western democracies, we expand on this body of work by investigating whether changes in macroeconomic fundamentals have triggered changes in perceived socioeconomic conflict. To assess this proposition, we fit hybrid m…
How does a poor labour market affect inequalities in access to postsecondary education? Empirical evidence from 31 affluent countries
This study examines how macroeconomic conditions affect inequality of educational opportunity. Using longitudinal data from 30 European countries and the USA, we study the effect of changing unemployment rates on the extent of social inequality in postsecondary transitions in the period (2004-2016), which includes the Great Recession. The findings from multilevel models with country fixed effects show that rising unemployment rates tend to increa…
A Generalized Ordered Logit Model to Accommodate Multiple Rating Scales
Rating scales are ubiquitous in the social sciences, yet may present practical difficulties when response formats change over time or vary across surveys. To allow researchers to pool rating data across alternative question formats, the article provides a generalization of the ordered logit model that accommodates multiple scale formats in the measurement of a single rating construct. The resulting multiscale ordered logit model shares the interp…
Explaining the ‘democratic malaise’ in unequal societies: Inequality, external efficacy and political trust
Previous scholarship suggests that rising inequality in democracies suppresses trust in institutions. However, the mechanism behind this has not clearly been identified. This paper investigates the proposition that income inequality leads to increased democratic distrust by depressing perceptions of external efficacy. Based on time‐series cross‐sectional survey data from the European Social Survey, we find that changes in income inequality have a…
Promoting men and women to management: Putting the glass escalator paradox in the establishment context
Research around the "glass escalator" demonstrates that men receive promotions faster than women in women-dominated occupations. However, it remains unclear how overall establishment composition affects the glass escalator. We use German longitudinal linked employer-employee data (LIAB) between 2012 and 2019 to examine how occupational and establishment gender composition shape gender differences in promotions to management. Establishment gender …
The Oxford Handbook of Social Stratification
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook; however, the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title …
Verfestigung von Armut und die zunehmende Bedeutung von Pfadabhängigkeiten im Lebenslauf
Die Ausstiegswahrscheinlichkeit aus relativer Einkommensarmut hat sich in Deutschland seit Mitte der 1990er-Jahre deutlich verringert. Anhand von Daten des SOEP wird diese Entwicklung mithilfe von Ereignisdatenmodellen und einer nichtlinearen Dekompositionsanalyse durch Veränderungen in der Zusammensetzung der von Armut betroffenen Bevölkerung und der veränderten Struktur der Ausstiegsprozesse erklärt. Die zunehmende Anzahl von Alleinlebenden, vo…
Regulated earnings security: The relationship between employment protection and unemployment scarring over the Great Recession
The Great Recession raised the concern that employment protective institutions that are effective during macroeconomic stability might become counterproductive under growing macroeconomic volatility. We study this question by examining the relationship between employment protection legislation (EPL) and unemployment scars on earnings in 21 countries during the period surrounding the Great Recession. We use harmonized work history data for 21 coun…
Thank You to Our Reviewers
Thank You to Our Reviewers Markus Gangl Markus Gangl Editor-in-Chief Email: [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5392-0079 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar European Sociological Review, Volume 36, Issue 6, December 2020, Page 989, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaa071 Published: 27 December 2020
Marriage and Masculinity: Male-Breadwinner Culture, Unemployment, and Separation Risk in 29 Countries
Scholars argue that gender culture, understood as a set of beliefs, norms, and social expectations defining masculinities and femininities, plays an important role in shaping when romantic relationships end. However, the relevance of gender culture is often underappreciated, in part because its empirical identification remains elusive. This study leverages cross-country variation in gender norms to test the hypothesis that gender culture conditio…
Unemployment and political trust across 24 Western democracies: Evidence on a welfare state paradox
Set against the backdrop of the Great Recession, the paper explores the interplay of unemployment experiences and political trust in the USA and 23 European countries between 2002 and 2017. Drawing on harmonized data from the European Social Survey and the General Social Survey, we confirm that citizens' personal experiences of unemployment depress trust in democratic institutions in all countries. Using multilevel linear probability models, we s…
Parental Unemployment and the Transition into Tertiary Education: Can Institutions Moderate the Adverse Effects
We examine how parental unemployment affects children’s transition to postsecondary education in different institutional contexts. Drawing on theoretical perspectives in intergenerational mobility research and sociology of higher education, we estimate the extent to which these intergenerational effects depend on social and education policies. We use data from five longitudinal surveys to analyze the effects of parental unemployment on entry to p…
The intergenerational effects of unemployment: How parental unemployment affects educational transitions in Germany
This paper studies the intergenerational effects of parental unemployment on students’ post-secondary transitions. Besides estimating the average treatment effect of parental unemployment on transition outcomes, we identify the economic, psychological or other intra-familial mechanisms that might explain any adverse impact of parental unemployment. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and propensity score matching estimato…
Parental Unemployment and the Transition to Vocational Training in Germany: Interaction of Household and Regional Sources of Disadvantage
We examine the impact of parental unemployment and regional labour market conditions on the probability of a successful transition from non-academic secondary schooling to vocational training in Germany, using data from the National Educational Panel Study and multilevel logistic regression models. Although widely regarded as a low-cost, low-risk and high-gain vocational path, we nevertheless find a clear negative effect of parental unemployment …
Trends in the demographic composition of poverty among working families in Germany and in Israel, 1991-2011
Changing labour market risks in the service economy: Low wages, part-time employment and the trend in working poverty risks in Germany
The article presents an analysis of the development of labour market risks in Germany in light of changing working poverty risks. Low hourly wages and part-time employment are identified as the main demand-side-related mechanisms for household poverty. Their measurement and development are discussed as well as their contribution to trends in working poverty risks. A rise in low wages, especially among part-time employed households, was decisive f…
Employment and Unemployment
Unemployment is a quintessentially modern economic risk, namely the inability to generate earnings from one's capacity for work that is available but chosen not to be put to use by other actors in the market. Thus, the existence of unemployment poses serious questions to a social theory of market economies. Seen as an economic problem, unemployment signals the existence of inefficiencies in the labor market and underutilization of productive capa…
Welfare State
The essence of the modern welfare state lies in its institutional commitment to reconcile equity issues with the efficient operation of markets in industrial and postindustrial capitalist societies. As capitalism institutionally relies on the free competition of autonomous individual agents in exchange markets to achieve economic efficiency, but meets with real‐world economies that exhibit an unequal distribution of resource and wealth holdings, …
Stratification in Hard Times
This essay reviews current research on the relationship between economic inequality and social stratification. Stratification, that is, the intergenerational reproduction of the distribution of incomes and socioeconomic advantage, is likely to be related to the level of economic inequality because parental incomes and wealth are important resources in families' investment in children's earnings capacity. The relationship is likely to be moderated…
The Making of a Good Woman: Extended Parental Leave Entitlements and Mothers' Work Commitment in Germany
The authors investigate the relationship between family policy and women's attachment to the labor market, focusing specifically on policy feedback on women's subjective work commitment. They utilize a quasi-experimental design to identify normative policy effects from changes in mothers' work commitment in conjunction with two policy changes that significantly extended the length of statutory parental leave entitlements in Germany. Using unique …
Do Women Respond to Changes in Family Policy? A Quasi-Experimental Study of the Duration of Mothers' Employment Interruptions in Germany
Based on a sequence of policy changes in Germany’s parental leave programme, the article uses an interrupted time-series design to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between mothers’ labour force behaviour and family policy. Using event history modelling techniques and 1984–2010 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, the analysis shows that mothers have strongly responded to various changes to Germany’s parental leave programme, i…
Causal Inference in Sociological Research
Originating in econometrics and statistics, the counterfactual model provides a natural framework for clarifying the requirements for valid causal inference in the social sciences. This article presents the basic potential outcomes model and discusses the main approaches to identification in social science research. It then addresses approaches to the statistical estimation of treatment effects either under unconfoundedness or in the presence of …
Motherhood, labor force behavior, and women’s careers: An empirical assessment of the wage penalty for motherhood in britain, germany, and the united states
Using harmonized longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we trace career prospects after motherhood for five cohorts of American, British, and West German women around the 1960s. We establish wage penalties for motherhood between 9% and 18% per child, with wage losses among American and British mothers being lower than those ex…
Welfare State
The essence of the modern welfare state lies in its institutional commitment to reconcile equity issues with the efficient operation of economic markets in industrial and post‐industrial capitalist societies. As capitalism institutionally relies on the free competition of autonomous individual agents in exchange markets to achieve economic efficiency, but meets with real‐world economies exhibiting an unequal distribution of wealth holdings, econo…
Scar Effects of Unemployment: An Assessment of Institutional Complementarities
This article uses panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for a comparative analysis of workers' post-unemployment earnings trajectories in the United States and 12 Western European countries. Across the study sample of industrialized countries, results of difference-in-difference propensity score matching show post-unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent…
Motherhood, labor force behavior, and women’s careers: An empirical assessment of the wage penalty for motherhood in britain, germany, and the united states
Using harmonized longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we trace career prospects after motherhood for five cohorts of American, British, and West German women around the 1960s. We establish wage penalties for motherhood between 9% and 18% per child, with wage losses among American and British mothers being lower than those ex…
Causal Inference in Sociological Research
Originating in econometrics and statistics, the counterfactual model provides a natural framework for clarifying the requirements for valid causal inference in the social sciences. This article presents the basic potential outcomes model and discusses the main approaches to identification in social science research. It then addresses approaches to the statistical estimation of treatment effects either under unconfoundedness or in the presence of …
Assessing Bias in the Estimation of Causal Effects: Rosenbaum Bounds on Matching Estimators and Instrumental Variables Estimation with Imperfect Instruments
Propensity score matching provides an estimate of the effect of a “treatment” variable on an outcome variable that is largely free of bias arising from an association between treatment status and observable variables. However, matching methods are not robust against “hidden bias” arising from unobserved variables that simultaneously affect assignment to treatment and the outcome variable. One strategy for addressing this problem is the Rosenbaum …
The Making of a Good Woman: Extended Parental Leave Entitlements and Mothers' Work Commitment in Germany
The authors investigate the relationship between family policy and women's attachment to the labor market, focusing specifically on policy feedback on women's subjective work commitment. They utilize a quasi-experimental design to identify normative policy effects from changes in mothers' work commitment in conjunction with two policy changes that significantly extended the length of statutory parental leave entitlements in Germany. Using unique …
Welfare States and the Scar Effects of Unemployment: A Comparative Analysis of the United States and West Germany
The article examines whether, through supporting workers’ search for adequate reemployment, the decommodification achieved by welfare state transfers reduces the longer‐run scar effects of unemployment. Drawing on employment history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the German Socio‐Economic Panel, the analysis establishes positive effects of unemployment benefits on workers’ post‐unemployment jobs: workers’ risks of in…
Marriage and Masculinity: Male-Breadwinner Culture, Unemployment, and Separation Risk in 29 Countries
Scholars argue that gender culture, understood as a set of beliefs, norms, and social expectations defining masculinities and femininities, plays an important role in shaping when romantic relationships end. However, the relevance of gender culture is often underappreciated, in part because its empirical identification remains elusive. This study leverages cross-country variation in gender norms to test the hypothesis that gender culture conditio…
Changing Labour Markets and Early Career Outcomes: Labour Market Entry in Europe Over the Past Decade
The paper addresses the driving forces behind recent changes in labour market outcomes among market entrants in Europe. Based on data for 12 European countries from the 1988-97 European Community Labour Force Surveys, the empirical analyses estimate panel data models to assess the effects of cyclical changes in aggregate economic conditions, changing youth cohort sizes, increasing educational expansion and structural changes in labour demand on m…
Do Women Respond to Changes in Family Policy? A Quasi-Experimental Study of the Duration of Mothers' Employment Interruptions in Germany
Based on a sequence of policy changes in Germany’s parental leave programme, the article uses an interrupted time-series design to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between mothers’ labour force behaviour and family policy. Using event history modelling techniques and 1984–2010 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, the analysis shows that mothers have strongly responded to various changes to Germany’s parental leave programme, i…
European patterns of labour market entry: A dichotomy of occupationalized vs. non-occupationalized systems
Many recent comparative studies of school-to-work transitions have revolved around the notion of an institutional dichotomy of transition arrangements that distinguishes the occupational labour markets of countries exhibiting extensive systems of vocational training and apprenticeships from the organizational markets found in countries with less integrated education and employment systems. This study scrutinizes this idea by assessing the extent …
Income Inequality, Permanent Incomes, and Income Dynamics: Comparing Europe to the United States
As income mobility over time serves to offset income inequality existing at any point in time, cross-national differences in social stratification are preferably assessed from data on average incomes over an extended period of time. Hence, this article uses longitudinal income data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the European Community Household Panel to reassess the received empirical evidence. Even discounting the impact of income m…
Unemployment and political trust across 24 Western democracies: Evidence on a welfare state paradox
Set against the backdrop of the Great Recession, the paper explores the interplay of unemployment experiences and political trust in the USA and 23 European countries between 2002 and 2017. Drawing on harmonized data from the European Social Survey and the General Social Survey, we confirm that citizens' personal experiences of unemployment depress trust in democratic institutions in all countries. Using multilevel linear probability models, we s…
Changing labour market risks in the service economy: Low wages, part-time employment and the trend in working poverty risks in Germany
The article presents an analysis of the development of labour market risks in Germany in light of changing working poverty risks. Low hourly wages and part-time employment are identified as the main demand-side-related mechanisms for household poverty. Their measurement and development are discussed as well as their contribution to trends in working poverty risks. A rise in low wages, especially among part-time employed households, was decisive f…
Institutions and the Structure of Labour Market Matching in the United States and West Germany
This paper examines the impact of institutional factors on the structure of matching processes in external labour markets. Drawing on 1984–1995 employment history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the German Socio-Economic Panel, the paper describes re-employment dynamics for unemployed workers in the United States and West Germany. Consistent with earlier research that has emphasized the strong skill stratification of …
The Only Way is Up: Employment Protection and Job Mobility among Recent Entrants to European Labour Markets
Journal Article The Only Way is Up? Employment Protection and Job Mobility among Recent Entrants to European Labour Markets Get access Markus Gangl Markus Gangl Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar European Sociological Review, Volume 19, Issue 5, December 2003, Pages 429–449, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/19.5.429 Published: 01 December 2003 Article history Received: 01 June 2002 Published: 01 December 2003
Explaining the ‘democratic malaise’ in unequal societies: Inequality, external efficacy and political trust
Previous scholarship suggests that rising inequality in democracies suppresses trust in institutions. However, the mechanism behind this has not clearly been identified. This paper investigates the proposition that income inequality leads to increased democratic distrust by depressing perceptions of external efficacy. Based on time‐series cross‐sectional survey data from the European Social Survey, we find that changes in income inequality have a…
The intergenerational effects of unemployment: How parental unemployment affects educational transitions in Germany
This paper studies the intergenerational effects of parental unemployment on students’ post-secondary transitions. Besides estimating the average treatment effect of parental unemployment on transition outcomes, we identify the economic, psychological or other intra-familial mechanisms that might explain any adverse impact of parental unemployment. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and propensity score matching estimato…
Trends in the demographic composition of poverty among working families in Germany and in Israel, 1991-2011
Labor Market Structure and Re-Employment Rates: Unemployment Dynamics in West Germany and the United States
Sozialhilfebezug und Arbeitsmarktverhalten: Eine Längsschnittanalyse der Übergänge aus der Sozialhilfe in den Arbeitsmarkt
Die neuere dynamische Armutsforschung zeigt, daß dauerhafter Sozialhilfebezug vergleichsweise selten ist. Die Sozialhilfe wird in vielen Fällen wieder verlassen, nicht zuletzt auch über den Arbeitsmarkt. Die vorliegende Analyse setzt an diesen Resultaten der dynamischen Armutsforschung an und arbeitet die Charakteristika und Bedingungsfaktoren von Abgängen aus der Sozialhilfe in den Arbeitsmarkt heraus. Auf der Basis eines Modells von Matchingpro…
Regulated earnings security: The relationship between employment protection and unemployment scarring over the Great Recession
The Great Recession raised the concern that employment protective institutions that are effective during macroeconomic stability might become counterproductive under growing macroeconomic volatility. We study this question by examining the relationship between employment protection legislation (EPL) and unemployment scars on earnings in 21 countries during the period surrounding the Great Recession. We use harmonized work history data for 21 coun…
Parental Unemployment and the Transition to Vocational Training in Germany: Interaction of Household and Regional Sources of Disadvantage
We examine the impact of parental unemployment and regional labour market conditions on the probability of a successful transition from non-academic secondary schooling to vocational training in Germany, using data from the National Educational Panel Study and multilevel logistic regression models. Although widely regarded as a low-cost, low-risk and high-gain vocational path, we nevertheless find a clear negative effect of parental unemployment …
A Generalized Ordered Logit Model to Accommodate Multiple Rating Scales
Rating scales are ubiquitous in the social sciences, yet may present practical difficulties when response formats change over time or vary across surveys. To allow researchers to pool rating data across alternative question formats, the article provides a generalization of the ordered logit model that accommodates multiple scale formats in the measurement of a single rating construct. The resulting multiscale ordered logit model shares the interp…
Verfestigung von Armut und die zunehmende Bedeutung von Pfadabhängigkeiten im Lebenslauf
Die Ausstiegswahrscheinlichkeit aus relativer Einkommensarmut hat sich in Deutschland seit Mitte der 1990er-Jahre deutlich verringert. Anhand von Daten des SOEP wird diese Entwicklung mithilfe von Ereignisdatenmodellen und einer nichtlinearen Dekompositionsanalyse durch Veränderungen in der Zusammensetzung der von Armut betroffenen Bevölkerung und der veränderten Struktur der Ausstiegsprozesse erklärt. Die zunehmende Anzahl von Alleinlebenden, vo…
Sozialhilfebezug und Arbeitsmarktverhalten: Eine Längsschnittanalyse der Übergänge aus der Sozialhilfe in den Arbeitsmarkt
Die neuere dynamische Armutsforschung zeigt, daß dauerhafter Sozialhilfebezug vergleichsweise selten ist. Die Sozialhilfe wird in vielen Fällen wieder verlassen, nicht zuletzt auch über den Arbeitsmarkt. Die vorliegende Analyse setzt an diesen Resultaten der dynamischen Armutsforschung an und arbeitet die Charakteristika und Bedingungsfaktoren von Abgängen aus der Sozialhilfe in den Arbeitsmarkt heraus. Auf der Basis eines Modells von Matchingpro…
European patterns of labour market entry: A dichotomy of occupationalized vs. non-occupationalized systems
Many recent comparative studies of school-to-work transitions have revolved around the notion of an institutional dichotomy of transition arrangements that distinguishes the occupational labour markets of countries exhibiting extensive systems of vocational training and apprenticeships from the organizational markets found in countries with less integrated education and employment systems. This study scrutinizes this idea by assessing the extent …
Changing Labour Markets and Early Career Outcomes: Labour Market Entry in Europe Over the Past Decade
The paper addresses the driving forces behind recent changes in labour market outcomes among market entrants in Europe. Based on data for 12 European countries from the 1988-97 European Community Labour Force Surveys, the empirical analyses estimate panel data models to assess the effects of cyclical changes in aggregate economic conditions, changing youth cohort sizes, increasing educational expansion and structural changes in labour demand on m…
The transition from school to work: A European perspective
Serves to set the stage for the substantive analyses provided in subsequent chapters. We outline a broad social science perspective on individual, structural, and institutional determinants of school-to-work transitions and define the cross-national comparison as our prime focus of interest. Consequently, we emphasize institutional explanations and in particular discuss the role of cross-national differences in training systems and labour market …
Transitions from Education to Work in Europe: The integration of youth into EU labour markets
Labor Market Structure and Re-Employment Rates: Unemployment Dynamics in West Germany and the United States
The Only Way is Up: Employment Protection and Job Mobility among Recent Entrants to European Labour Markets
Journal Article The Only Way is Up? Employment Protection and Job Mobility among Recent Entrants to European Labour Markets Get access Markus Gangl Markus Gangl Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar European Sociological Review, Volume 19, Issue 5, December 2003, Pages 429–449, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/19.5.429 Published: 01 December 2003 Article history Received: 01 June 2002 Published: 01 December 2003
Glenn Firebaugh: The New Geography of Global Income Inequality
Elmar Rieger and Stephan Leibfried. Limits to Globalization. Welfare States and the World Economy Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. 402 pp
Journal Article Elmar Rieger and Stephan Leibfried. Limits to Globalization. Welfare States and the World Economy Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. 402 pp. Get access Markus Gangl Markus Gangl Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB), Germany Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar European Sociological Review, Volume 20, Issue 3, July 2004, Pages 265–267, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jch022 Published: 01 July 2004
Assessing Bias in the Estimation of Causal Effects: Rosenbaum Bounds on Matching Estimators and Instrumental Variables Estimation with Imperfect Instruments
Propensity score matching provides an estimate of the effect of a “treatment” variable on an outcome variable that is largely free of bias arising from an association between treatment status and observable variables. However, matching methods are not robust against “hidden bias” arising from unobserved variables that simultaneously affect assignment to treatment and the outcome variable. One strategy for addressing this problem is the Rosenbaum …
Institutions and the Structure of Labour Market Matching in the United States and West Germany
This paper examines the impact of institutional factors on the structure of matching processes in external labour markets. Drawing on 1984–1995 employment history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the German Socio-Economic Panel, the paper describes re-employment dynamics for unemployed workers in the United States and West Germany. Consistent with earlier research that has emphasized the strong skill stratification of …
Welfare States and the Scar Effects of Unemployment: A Comparative Analysis of the United States and West Germany
The article examines whether, through supporting workers’ search for adequate reemployment, the decommodification achieved by welfare state transfers reduces the longer‐run scar effects of unemployment. Drawing on employment history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the German Socio‐Economic Panel, the analysis establishes positive effects of unemployment benefits on workers’ post‐unemployment jobs: workers’ risks of in…
Income Inequality, Permanent Incomes, and Income Dynamics: Comparing Europe to the United States
As income mobility over time serves to offset income inequality existing at any point in time, cross-national differences in social stratification are preferably assessed from data on average incomes over an extended period of time. Hence, this article uses longitudinal income data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the European Community Household Panel to reassess the received empirical evidence. Even discounting the impact of income m…
Scar Effects of Unemployment: An Assessment of Institutional Complementarities
This article uses panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for a comparative analysis of workers' post-unemployment earnings trajectories in the United States and 12 Western European countries. Across the study sample of industrialized countries, results of difference-in-difference propensity score matching show post-unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent…
Welfare State
The essence of the modern welfare state lies in its institutional commitment to reconcile equity issues with the efficient operation of economic markets in industrial and post‐industrial capitalist societies. As capitalism institutionally relies on the free competition of autonomous individual agents in exchange markets to achieve economic efficiency, but meets with real‐world economies exhibiting an unequal distribution of wealth holdings, econo…
Motherhood, labor force behavior, and women’s careers: An empirical assessment of the wage penalty for motherhood in britain, germany, and the united states
Using harmonized longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we trace career prospects after motherhood for five cohorts of American, British, and West German women around the 1960s. We establish wage penalties for motherhood between 9% and 18% per child, with wage losses among American and British mothers being lower than those ex…
Causal Inference in Sociological Research
Originating in econometrics and statistics, the counterfactual model provides a natural framework for clarifying the requirements for valid causal inference in the social sciences. This article presents the basic potential outcomes model and discusses the main approaches to identification in social science research. It then addresses approaches to the statistical estimation of treatment effects either under unconfoundedness or in the presence of …
Do Women Respond to Changes in Family Policy? A Quasi-Experimental Study of the Duration of Mothers' Employment Interruptions in Germany
Based on a sequence of policy changes in Germany’s parental leave programme, the article uses an interrupted time-series design to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between mothers’ labour force behaviour and family policy. Using event history modelling techniques and 1984–2010 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, the analysis shows that mothers have strongly responded to various changes to Germany’s parental leave programme, i…
Stratification in Hard Times
This essay reviews current research on the relationship between economic inequality and social stratification. Stratification, that is, the intergenerational reproduction of the distribution of incomes and socioeconomic advantage, is likely to be related to the level of economic inequality because parental incomes and wealth are important resources in families' investment in children's earnings capacity. The relationship is likely to be moderated…
The Making of a Good Woman: Extended Parental Leave Entitlements and Mothers' Work Commitment in Germany
The authors investigate the relationship between family policy and women's attachment to the labor market, focusing specifically on policy feedback on women's subjective work commitment. They utilize a quasi-experimental design to identify normative policy effects from changes in mothers' work commitment in conjunction with two policy changes that significantly extended the length of statutory parental leave entitlements in Germany. Using unique …
Employment and Unemployment
Unemployment is a quintessentially modern economic risk, namely the inability to generate earnings from one's capacity for work that is available but chosen not to be put to use by other actors in the market. Thus, the existence of unemployment poses serious questions to a social theory of market economies. Seen as an economic problem, unemployment signals the existence of inefficiencies in the labor market and underutilization of productive capa…
Welfare State
The essence of the modern welfare state lies in its institutional commitment to reconcile equity issues with the efficient operation of markets in industrial and postindustrial capitalist societies. As capitalism institutionally relies on the free competition of autonomous individual agents in exchange markets to achieve economic efficiency, but meets with real‐world economies that exhibit an unequal distribution of resource and wealth holdings, …
Changing labour market risks in the service economy: Low wages, part-time employment and the trend in working poverty risks in Germany
The article presents an analysis of the development of labour market risks in Germany in light of changing working poverty risks. Low hourly wages and part-time employment are identified as the main demand-side-related mechanisms for household poverty. Their measurement and development are discussed as well as their contribution to trends in working poverty risks. A rise in low wages, especially among part-time employed households, was decisive f…
The intergenerational effects of unemployment: How parental unemployment affects educational transitions in Germany
This paper studies the intergenerational effects of parental unemployment on students’ post-secondary transitions. Besides estimating the average treatment effect of parental unemployment on transition outcomes, we identify the economic, psychological or other intra-familial mechanisms that might explain any adverse impact of parental unemployment. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and propensity score matching estimato…
Parental Unemployment and the Transition to Vocational Training in Germany: Interaction of Household and Regional Sources of Disadvantage
We examine the impact of parental unemployment and regional labour market conditions on the probability of a successful transition from non-academic secondary schooling to vocational training in Germany, using data from the National Educational Panel Study and multilevel logistic regression models. Although widely regarded as a low-cost, low-risk and high-gain vocational path, we nevertheless find a clear negative effect of parental unemployment …
Economics (29 works) · Demographic economics (18 works) · Labour economics (18 works) · Political science (18 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (18 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Economic growth (13 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (12 works) · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality (11 works) · Unemployment (11 works)