Search

This paper compares recent developments in income inequality in Canada, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition to describing cross-national variation in changes in income inequality, the paper examines different explanatory factors for these recent developments. The findings reported indicate that there is substantial cross-national variation, not only with regard to the level of inequality, but furthermore with regard to changes in inequality. The results indicate that the equalizing effect of welfare state redistribution did not decrease in all countries. By contrast, in all countries there was a universal tendency towards increased inequality in the pre-tax and transfer distribution, although the magnitude of the change differs from country to country. Even though a polarization of the earnings distribution is reported, the results still give no support to cross-national convergence with regard to income inequality during the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theodor Geiger grew up in Germany and emigrated to Denmark in 1933, threatened by the Nazi regime. He worked at the University of Copenhagen 1933-38 and was the first Professor of Sociology at the University of Aarhus 1938-52. He spent 3 years in exile in Sweden. Geiger is an important figure in German and Scandinavian sociology and also known in English-speaking countries. He was a prolific teacher and writer. Throughout his life as a sociologist Geiger combined theoretical with empirical interest. If he rejected all speculation without a factual basis, he showed an equally strong disdain for empiricism without a theoretical foundation (Mayntz 1969). His works cover a broad spectrum of subjects, still of professional interest, such as: the foundation and fundamental concepts of sociology, the education of working-class people, industrial organization, class structure, stratification and mobility, social origin and functions of the intelligentsia, the sociology of law, critics of ideology and the nature of modern mass-society and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with one major aspect of the transformation of former socialist societies: the reallocation of persons in the occupational and class structure via individual mobility processes. In East Germany, this transformation occurred within the unique context of the legal, political and economic incorporation of the former German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Theoretically, we develop hypotheses on the society of origin, the society of destination, and the transformation process itself as well as hypotheses on the determinants of success and failure in the transition process. Empirically, we rely on the East German part of the German Life History Study (GLHS), a representative study of the East German women and men born in 1929-31, 1939-41, 1951-53 and 1959-61. Our analyses focus especially on the transition process between 1989 and 1993. Among the unexpected results are the high degree of occupational stability among those able to remain in the labour market and the high rate of downward mobility combined with a low rate of unemployment among former managers and affiliates of the Communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a cross-cultural evidence on the effects of resources in relation to the choice of a distribution principle in the U.S., Sweden and Germany. Three rules of allocation which have been the topics of theoretical discussion and research are to each one according to their contribution, to each one according to their need, and to each one equally. Social psychologists have been concerned with discovering factors which contribute to the adoption of one rule over the other two. The dependent variable, which was the choice of allocation rule, was operationalized in two ways, such as that subjects in three of these studies were asked to indicate their preferences for rules, while in the other three the rules were evaluated in terms of their justice. Preferences were investigated for distribution rules in two populations, namely undergraduate students at Temple University and members of Rotary Club, an organization of business people. Among the latter there was a tendency to prefer the criterion of contribution over equality, no matter which resource was allocated. Among students this preference was limited to distribution of money and status or prestige. With regard to information, students preferred distribution by the need principle.