Family dissolution and public policies in Germany: Social provisions and institutional changes since the 1980s
Germany has long been faced with low birth rates and a pronounced aging of society. Recently divorces and single parenthood have been on the rise. Family policies and regulations dealing with family break-up are thus confronted with new and greater challenges. After describing important changes in household and family composition in more detail, this paper outlines the regulation of the consequences of family break up in relation to alimony and child support. The main part of the paper focuses on public policies in support of families. Here monetary benefits as well as child care services are considered. Because of the increase of single-parent families a small-subsection specifically looks at special benefits for single parents. The analysis of child care and parental benefits, and their evolution in Germany, reveals considerable increases in benefits since the mid-1980s. The changes in child benefits and parental allowance can be broadly classified into three periods where benefits rise from low to high: 1) until 1985, benefits were very low; 2) in 1986, parental allowance was introduced, so that from 1986 to 1995 the level of benefits was moderate; 3) in 1996, the period of high benefits began and benefits were increased considerably. The 2007 reform of parental allowance led to an implicit indexation in which the benefit is now related to formerly earned income. This reform entailed clear increases for middle and high earners. However, low income earners and recipients of social transfers clearly lost when the benefit duration was reduced. Not only have cash benefits been increased, but child care services have also been extended in the western federal states. In terms of institutional reforms regarding alimony and child support, there has been little change compared to the development of family policy benefits.
Unemployment compensation in Germany: Provisions and institutional changes since the 1980s
Social protection in case of unemployment has always been a particularly contentious issue. This paper focuses on institutional changes in the unemployment compensation system in Germany since the 1980s. It starts with a description of key features and the structure of the unemployment insurance system. The paper goes on to show how insurance coverage, benefit generosity (in terms of amount and duration of benefits), and eligibility requirements for drawing on unemployment benefits have evolved over time. Nearly all aspects of unemployment benefits have been reduced since the 1980s. An exception to this rule can be seen in the duration of benefits; they were first extended and then subsequently reduced. Elsewhere, the pattern has been of cutbacks. For example, the scope of insurance (measured as the proportion of the labour force being insured) was reduced. This decline, however, was due more to changes in the labour force than to direct government intervention. Replacement rates for unemployment benefits and assistance were cut. In the case of the latter these were transformed into a flat-rate benefit. Finally, regulations regarding eligibility and criteria for qualification and disqualification became increasingly strict.
Levels and Levers of Conditionality: Measuring Change Within Welfare States
Bold claims are often made about the current development of welfare states, both by critical theorists of social policies and by the politicians that are reforming them. But characterizing the nature and magnitude of the changes that welfare states have undergone in recent decades seems to pose major problems for empirical – and particularly comparative empirical – analysis. The lively debate concerning the range of factors that may result in (more or less) change in social protection arrangements – including most importantly structural socioeconomic forces, changing power resources, new ideas, party competition, institutions, policy legacies and path dependence (for overviews, see van Kersbergen, 1995; Amenta, 2003) – is complicated by the fact that analysts struggle to agree on what, exactly, is the real character and extent of change to be explained. Controversies and contradictory readings abound in the comparative social policy literature. Have we, as some maintain, witnessed a ‘paradigm shift’ in the techniques and strategies for managing social risks, or merely a series of adjustments at the margins? And if recent reforms are leading to the emergence of a distinctively new ‘type’ or ‘form’ of social policy, is this equally true in all developed welfare states, or only (to date) in some? While in social sciences there is always scope for differing interpretations, convincingly and consistently answering these kinds of questions arguably turns first and foremost on the identification of the most appropriate data for examination. Differently put, the key challenge for assessing the extent of certain hypothesized or postulated changes in welfare state programmes is not so much one of accurate measurement, but rather of developing more adequate conceptualizations and operationalizations of the possibly variable qualities of welfare state programmes. Arguments about new forms of social policy provision or regulation speak to certain welfare state properties in