Article

Ausgleich oder Verschärfung von Einkommensrisiken? Lebensläufe und Alterseinkommen in Deutschland aus der Paarperspektive

De Gruyter
Zeitschrift für Sozialreform - Journal of Social Policy Research
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Abstract

Wir analysieren Erwerbs- und Einkommensbiografien von Paaren mittels einer Multichannel -Sequenzmusteranalyse, um Rückschlüsse auf das Alterseinkommen von Frauen in Deutschland und Ausgleichsprozesse im Haushaltskontext abzuleiten. Datengrundlage ist eine Verknüpfung der administrativen Daten der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung mit dem „Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe“, die Biografieinformationen west- und ostdeutscher Personen der Geburtskohorten 1927 bis 1965 (N = 2.292) enthält. Wir identifizieren acht Paarverlaufsmuster, die sich in ihrer Nähe zu einem männlichen Alleinverdiener- oder einem Zweiverdienermodell unterscheiden. Während Frauen von kontinuierlicher Erwerbstätigkeit und kurzen Erziehungsunterbrechungen in Hinblick auf ihr Individual- und Haushaltseinkommen substanziell profitieren, stellen Biografien mit Erwerbsausstieg ein Armutsrisiko auf Haushaltsebene dar, das im Alter nur durch stark überdurchschnittliche Partnereinkommen ausgeglichen werden kann.

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Zwischen den Alterseinkommen von deutschen Rentnerinnen und Rentnern liegen Welten, genauer gesagt Lebenswelten, die geschlechtsspezifisch konstruiert sind. Sehr deutlich zeigt sich das in den Erwerbsbiografien von Männern und Frauen: Während die einen typischerweise von durchgehender Vollzeitbeschäftigung geprägt sind, werden die anderen von der Übernahme von Familienaufgaben beeinflusst. Wie sich die dahinter stehenden erwerbsbiografischen Verläufe von Frauen unterscheiden, welche Auswirkungen die Erwerbsunterbrechungen wegen Kindererziehung auf ihre Alterseinkommensperspektiven haben und welche Verteilungs- und Kohortentrends dabei zu beobachten sind, untersucht der vorliegende Artikel.
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Das überarbeitete Hand- und Lehrbuch bietet in zwei Bänden einen breiten empirischen Überblick über die Arbeits- und Lebensverhältnisse in Deutschland und die zentralen sozialen Problemlagen. Im Mittelpunkt der Darstellung stehen Arbeitsmarkt, Arbeitslosigkeit und Arbeitsbedingungen, Einkommensverteilung und Armut, Krankheit und Pflegebedürftigkeit sowie die Lebenslagen von Familien und von älteren Menschen. Auf der Grundlage dieses Überblicks werden die Maßnahmen, Leistungen und Einrichtungen des sozialstaatlichen Systems ausführlich vorgestellt und bewertet. Berücksichtigt werden neben Sozialversicherung und Sozialhilfe auch Arbeitsmarktpolitik, Arbeitsschutzpolitik, Gesundheitspolitik, Familienpolitik, Steuerpolitik, Altenpolitik und kommunale Sozialpolitik. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit finden die nicht-staatliche Sozialpolitik durch Betriebs- und Tarifpolitik sowie die Versorgung mit sozialen Diensten durch Wohlfahrtsverbände, kommunale Träger sowie Selbsthilfe und Ehrenamt. Jeweils werden die Herausforderungen der Sozialpolitik und Lösungsperspektiven thematisiert, dies auch in Bezug auf die europäische Dimension des Wohlfahrtsstaates. Das Buch gibt nicht nur den aktuellen Stand der Gesetzeslage wieder, sondern greift auch in die gegenwärtige theoretische und politische Diskussion um die Zukunft des Sozialstaates in Deutschland ein. Es wendet sich an Studierende und Lehrende an Hochschulen, Schulen, Bildungseinrichtungen sowie an Experten in Verwaltungen, Verbänden und Gewerkschaften.
Article
This study examines the retirement income of women in Europe, focusing on the effect of motherhood. Due to their more interrupted working careers compared to non-mothers and fathers, mothers are likely to accumulate fewer pension entitlements, and consequently, to receive lower incomes in later life. However, pension systems in Europe vary widely in the degree to which they compensate for care-related career interruptions by means of redistributive elements or pension care entitlements. Therefore, care interruptions may matter for the retirement income of women in some countries, but may be rather irrelevant in others. On the basis of life history data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARELIFE) for women aged between 60 and 75 years in 13 European countries, the interplay of individual lifecourse characteristics with institutional and structural factors is examined. The results show that the lower retirement income of mothers is mainly a result of fewer years in employment and lower-status jobs throughout the lifecourse. The analysis of institutional factors reveals that pension care entitlements are not able to provide a compensation for care-related cutbacks in working life. A generally redistributive design of the pension system including basic or targeted pension schemes, in contrast, appears as an effective measure to balance differences in employment participation over the lifecourse.
Article
This article uses sequence analysis to examine how gender inequality in work-family trajectories unfolds from early adulthood untilmiddle age in two different welfare state contexts. Results based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the German National Education Panel Study demonstrate that in Germany, all work-family trajectories are highly gender-specific irrespective of social class. In contrast, patterns of work-family interplay across the life course in the United States are, overall, less gendered, but they differ widely by social class. In fact, work-family patterns characterized by high occupational prestige are fairly equally accessible for men and women. However, women are far more likely than men to experience the joint occurrence of single parenthood and unstable low-prestigework careers in the United States. The authors contribute to the literature by bringing in a longitudinal, process-oriented life course perspective and conceptualizing workfamily trajectories as interlocked, multidimensional processes.
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In der aktuellen politischen Diskussion ist das Thema Altersarmut hochgradig präsent: Ein wichtiges Indiz dafür ist der Auffassungswandel der Bundesregierung: Während diese in den zurückliegenden Jahren immer wieder darauf hingewiesen hatte – so zuletzt in der Antwort auf eine große Anfrage der Fraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Deutscher Bundestag 2011) –, dass Altersarmut kein verbreitetes Phänomen sei und durch den Ausbau der betrieblichen und privaten Vorsorge (Riester) sowie durch Grundsicherung im Alter vermieden werde, schlägt sie Ende 2011 im ‚Regierungsdialog Rente‘ vor, aufstockende ‚Zuschussrenten‘ einzuführen, um angesichts der zu erwartenden Ausweitung von niedrigen Versicherungsrenten die Gefahr einer wachsenden Altersarmut und die Angewiesenheit auf Leistungen der Grundsicherung zu vermeiden.
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Hand in Hand mit der Altersstruktur der Gesellschaft wandeln sich Lebenslaufmuster und individuelle Biografien. Dies gilt für alle Facetten des Lebenslaufs, also etwa für Erwerbsbiografien, für Bildungsbiografien und für Familien- und Partnerschaftsbiografien. Dieser Wandel bringt neue soziale Risiken und Bedürfnisse hervor, zu deren Absicherung das bestehende sozialpolitische Instrumentarium immer weniger geeignet ist. Um nur drei Beispiele zu nennen: Wenn die sozialversicherungsfreie selbständige Beschäftigung zunimmt, schwinden der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung die Einnahmen, gleichzeitig sind Phasen der selbständigen Beschäftigung in der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung nicht abgesichert. Die Familienpolitik ist immer noch wenig an dem Ziel ausgerichtet, auch den Müttern kontinuierliche Bildungs- und Erwerbskarrieren zu ermöglichen. Und das Bildungssystem schließlich ist bislang kaum darauf eingestellt, dass Phasen des Bildungserwerbs sich nicht mehr ausschließlich am Anfang des Lebenslaufs konzentrieren, sondern sich über den Lebenslauf hinweg verteilen. Die implizite Botschaft dieses Beitrags lautet deshalb, dass die neuen sozialen Risiken besser abgesichert werden können, wenn die Sozialpolitik auf sich verändernde Lebensläufe und Lebensplanungen hin ausgerichtet und zu einer sozialen Lebenslaufpolitik weiterentwickelt wird.
Article
How are gendered work–family life courses associated with financial well-being in retirement? In this article we compare the cohorts born 1920–1950 in West Germany and Switzerland, whose adult life courses are characterized by similar strong male-breadwinner contexts in both countries. The countries differ in that Switzerland represented a liberal pension system, whereas Germany represented a corporatist protective pension system when these cohorts retired. We therefore assess how gendered work–family life courses that developed in similar male-breadwinner contexts are related to financial well-being in retirement in different pension systems. Using data from the SHARELIFE survey we conduct multichannel sequence analysis and cluster analysis to identify groups of typical work–family life courses from ages 20 to 59. Regression models estimate how these groups are associated with the individual pension income and household income in retirement. Results show that women who combined motherhood with part time work and extended periods out of the labour force have even lower individual pension income in Switzerland compared to their German peers. This relative disadvantage partly extends to lower household income in retirement. Findings support that male breadwinner policies earlier in life combined with liberal pension policies later in life, as in Switzerland, intensify pension penalties for typical female work–family life courses of early motherhood and weak labour force attachment. We conclude that life course sensitive social policies should harmonize regulations, which are in effect earlier in life with policies later in life for specific birth cohorts.
Article
Pension care entitlements are believed to be highly relevant for the reduction of gender inequality in pension income. Almost all European countries have implemented care entitlements within their mostly earnings-related public pension schemes. This raises the question of what actual effect these benefits have: can they reduce the “pension penalty of caring”, that is the loss in pension income as a consequence of mothers’ care-related employment interruptions and part-time work? I analyse the pension incomes of older women and the mother pension gap, the income difference between mothers and childless women, and examines the impact of pension care entitlements. Micro-level life course data on individual employment histories in 13 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARELIFE) is used and combined with institutional data. The results of the multilevel analyses show that the actual effect of pension care entitlements on the income position of older women is low. On the contrary, the existence of basic pension schemes and the gender inequality within working life are important factors which influence the income position of mothers in old age. Rentenleistungen fur Elternschaft und Kinderbetreuungszeiten, den sogenannten Mutterrenten, wird eine hohe Bedeutung zur Reduktion der Geschlechterungleichheit beim Alterseinkommen zugeschrieben. So haben fast alle europaischen Lander entsprechende Regelungen in ihren ansonsten uberwiegend erwerbszentrierten staatlichen Rentensystemen etabliert. Aber welche Wirkungen haben diese Leistungen tatsachlich? Konnen sie die Einbusen beim Alterseinkommen, die sich fur Frauen durch Kinderbetreuungszeiten ergeben, tatsachlich kompensieren und den mother pension gap reduzieren? Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen Uberblick uber die institutionellen Regelungen zur Berucksichtigung von Elternschaft und Kindererziehung in den Rentensystemen Europas und unterzieht ihre Wirkungen auf das Alterseinkommen von Muttern einer empirischen Prufung. Dafur werden Biografiedaten von Frauen aus 13 europaischen Landern aus dem Survey of Health, Ageing andRetirement in Europe (SHARELIFE) herangezogen. Die Mehrebenenanalysen zeigen, dass die tatsachliche Wirkung von Mutterrenten auf das Alterseinkommen von Frauen gering ist. Eine hohe Bedeutung haben hingegen das Vorhandensein von allgemeinen Basisrenten sowie die Geschlechterungleichheit im Erwerbsleben.
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This chapter reviews the current state of German family policy with a special focus on rights and obligations. It identifies the peculiarities of family policies in the formerly socialist East and in the conservative-familist West. German unification merged two contrasting models of family policy: the East German dual-earner model and the West German male breadwinner model. While family policy in East Germany expected both mothers and fathers to work full-time, West German family policy was based on ideas of different but equal and complementary gender roles. East Germany employed measures to increase fertility rates and support having children. Pre-unification West Germany, in contrast, had continuously rejected pro-natalism. We will argue that unified Germany is heading towards a third policy model that has more in common with the East German model than the family policy model of former West Germany. Sustainable family policy (Nachhaltige Familienpolitik), as this third model has been called by politicians, conceives of children as society’s future assets; it seeks to encourage childbearing by supporting parents to balance work and family responsibilities, and attempts to reduce child poverty by increasing maternal employment.
Article
We use event history analysis to study the effects of family-related factors on the employment behavior of U.S. and (West) German women in a dynamic life course perspective. Data from the National Survey of Families and Households and the German Socioeconomic Panel are analyzed to examine the differential determinants of entry into and exit from full-time and part-time employment during the family life course and the differences in these processes between the two countries. Marriage and childbearing continue to influence exit from and entry into paid work in both countries. Family structure plays a stronger role in women's working lives in Germany than in the U.S., and part-time work in Germany is more closely related to childbearing.
Article
We investigate the labour market situation of older individuals in Europe in relation to their previous employment history as well as the regulations relating to employment protection legislation and early retirement. Specifically, we look at the competing risks of early retirement and late career unemployment. The central research question is whether policy effects differ according to the characteristics of an individual's previous work history. We employ data for twelve European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARELIFE) and estimate multilevel regression models. The results show different mechanisms for the risks of unemployment and early retirement. Late career unemployment results from individual factors related to fragmented careers, marginal employment and short tenures. In the case of early retirement, we find the interplay of individual and policy factors to be crucial. Persons with consistent careers have an increased probability of early retirement, but only in countries with generous early retirement benefits. However, employment protection legislation appears to counteract early retirement for this group of individuals. We conclude that policy factors do not have uniform effects for older individuals, but should rather be viewed against the background of previous developments in individual career paths.
Article
In this article, we provide a long-term East–West comparison of partnered women’s employment from the 1940s into the first decade of the new millennium in Germany, and focus on the nexus of gainful employment and family-related responsibilities in women’s lives. Based on an analysis of the institutionally and culturally shaped opportunity structures that define the conditions for partnered women’s employment, we identify distinct periods of support and derive hypotheses on cohort-specific developments. The empirical analysis largely confirms that a divergence between East and West German women’s employment patterns started as early as in the 1950s. East–West differences in labour market participation were strongest among women born around 1940. For successive cohorts of East and West German women, the employment patterns converged. Whereas the labour market participation of West German women gradually increased over time, the employment pattern of East German women adjusted to the West German pattern after unification, resulting in an increase of part-time employment and non-employment, in particular among mothers. The article concludes by discussing implications of these trends for the future of the male breadwinner model.
Article
In research on pensions and retirement income, it has been frequently reasoned that the economic situation in later life is determined by an interplay of individual and institutional factors. However, previous studies in this field either focus only on individual determinants or on macro-level outcomes using aggregated data. We apply a multilevel approach to examine the impact of institutional factors on the link of individual pension income and previous employment history. The underlying research question is of how national pension systems shape this relationship; whether flexible careers and atypical employment are compensated for or, on the contrary, ‘penalised’ with a low pension income. We combine the life-history data of individuals in 13 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARELIFE) with macro-data on national pension systems. While we find little cross-national variation for men, for women the strength of the relationship of employment history and pension income differs between countries and is significantly moderated by factors related to the pension system.
Article
Gesellschaftliche Veränderungen, wie die steigende Zahl von Ehescheidungen und der hohe Anteil nicht-ehelicher Lebensgemeinschaften, führen zu einer wachsenden Bedeutung einer eigenständigen, armutsvermeidenden Alterssicherung von Frauen. Zwar erscheint dieses Ziel aufgrund der gestiegenen Erwerbsbeteiligung von Frauen zunehmend erreichbar, Ungleichheiten auf dem Arbeitsmarkt wirken sich allerdings weiterhin negativ auf die Erwerbs- und Einkommenschancen von Frauen aus. Der Einfluss verschiedener erwerbsbiografischer Faktoren auf den Gender Pension Gap, also den Unterschied zwischen den Alterseinkommen von Männern und Frauen, wird hier mit den Daten „Altersvorsorge in Deutschland (AVID) 2005“ für Westdeutschland untersucht. Verglichen werden die projizierten Alterseinkünfte im Hinblick auf die gesetzliche, betriebliche und private Vorsorge für zwei Kohorten: 1942–1946 sowie 1957–1961 Geborene. Mit Hilfe einer Oaxaca-Blinder-Dekomposition wird der Anteil verschiedener Erklärungsfaktoren an der Entstehung der Lücke quantifiziert. Die Studie kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass bislang weder die gestiegene Bildungsbeteiligung von Frauen noch ihre zunehmende Erwerbsbeteiligung zu einer deutlichen Verringerung des Gender Pension Gaps geführt haben. Dieser beträgt bei den Alterseinkommen insgesamt auch für die jüngere Kohorte noch 51 %, im Vergleich zu 58 % in der älteren Kohorte. Die multivariaten Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es vor allem der Vollzeit-Teilzeit-Gap ist, der den weiterhin großen Unterschied in den Alterseinkommen von Männern und Frauen verursacht.
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All government policies affect the lives of citizens in some direct or indirect way. Despite the pervasiveness of the influence, relatively little attention has been given to the manner in which government impinges on the individual life course. This article aims to show that exploring the relationship between government and life course provides a seminal perspective both for the study of the life course and for welfare state analysis, especially with regard to cross-national comparison. “A thorough examination of the state and its policies may provide further insights into the ways in which age and the life course are treated in a society” [59].
Article
Applications of optimal matching analysis in the social sciences are typically based on sequences of specific social statuses that model the residential, family, or occupational trajectories of individuals. Despite the broadly recognized interdependence of these statuses, few attempts have been made to systematize the ways in which optimal matching analysis should be applied multidimensionally-that is, in an approach that takes into account multiple trajectories simultaneously. Based on methods pioneered in the field of bioinformatics, this paper proposes a method of multichannel sequence analysis (MCSA) that simultaneously extends the usual optimal matching analysis (OMA) to multiple life spheres. Using data from the Swiss household panel (SHP), we examine the types of trajectories obtained using MCSA. We also consider a random data set and find that MCSA offers an alternative to the sole use of ex-post sum of distance matrices by locally aligning distinct life trajectories simultaneously. Moreover, MCSA reduces the complexity of the typologies it allows to produce, without making them less informative. It is more robust to noise in the data, and it provides more reliable alignments than two independent OMA.
Article
A procedure for forming hierarchical groups of mutually exclusive subsets, each of which has members that are maximally similar with respect to specified characteristics, is suggested for use in large-scale (n > 100) studies when a precise optimal solution for a specified number of groups is not practical. Given n sets, this procedure permits their reduction to n − 1 mutually exclusive sets by considering the union of all possible n(n − 1)/2 pairs and selecting a union having a maximal value for the functional relation, or objective function, that reflects the criterion chosen by the investigator. By repeating this process until only one group remains, the complete hierarchical structure and a quantitative estimate of the loss associated with each stage in the grouping can be obtained. A general flowchart helpful in computer programming and a numerical example are included.
Article
In the present study, we examine employment biographies of women using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Specifically, we compare the cohort of the baby boomers (1956–1965) with two older cohorts (1936–1945 and 1946–1955) by carrying out sequence analyses to investigate changes in their employment careers. Based on the biography sequences, we consider four different clusters to identify typical employment patterns of the three cohorts. Results show that women's careers have changed in the sense that there is an increase in the proportion of discontinuous careers and a decrease in the percentage of women with a continuous full time employment biography. At the same time, part time employment biographies gain in relevance and housewife biographies become less common. Within all types of employment patterns, the degree of plurality rises and biographies become more inhomogeneous in the sense that the number of transitions as well as the number of different states increases. Regarding the specific developments in West and East Germany, results show that on the one hand both regions are growing more alike in the sense that the high percentage of women primarily in full time employment dominated careers in East Germany has dropped and the percentage of housewife biographies in West Germany has decreased. On the other hand, there are still relevant differences between the employment patterns of West and East German women: West German women are still much more likely to experience a housewife biography, and part time work is much more relevant for women in West Germany. East German women still have to a large degree full time employment oriented biographies, but in East Germany in particular, there is a distinct trend towards discontinuous and de-standardized careers.
Frauenberufe - Männerberufe: zur Persistenz geschlechtshierarchischer Arbeitsmarktsegregation. Wien, Institut für Höhere Studien
  • Andrea Leitner
„Employment histories and pension incomes in Europe: A multilevel analysis of the role of institutional factors“