In der gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung erfolgt - neben der eigentlichen Versicherung gegen Krankheit - über die Ausgestaltung der Beitragserhebung eine familien- und verteilungspolitisch motivierte Einkommensumverteilung. Ist eine Krankenversicherung der richtige Ort für solch eine Umverteilung? Wie groß ist ihr Ausmaß? Welche anderen Möglichkeiten der Beitragserhebung gibt es?
Dieser Beitrag untersucht aus verfassungsökonomischer Sicht den Reformvorschlag, die Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung durch Kopfbeiträge zu finanzieren. Dabei wird davon ausgegangen, dass sich die Bürger im Verfassungszustand einem nicht versicherbaren Prämienrisiko gegenübersehen. Das Niveau des öffentlichen Gesundheitswesens wird im demokratischen Entscheidungsprozess festgelegt. Ein Vergleich des politischen Gleichgewichts bei einer Finanzierung durch Kopfbeiträge und bei einer einkommensabhängigen Finanzierung zeigt, dass eine Verbindung von Einkommensumverteilung und der Umverteilung zwischen Gesunden und Kranken im Verfassungszustand von allen Bürgern vorgezogen werden kann. Bei einer Einführung von Kopfbeiträgen ist deshalb darauf zu achten, dass die Einkommensumverteilung und die Umverteilung zwischen Gesunden und Kranken nicht vollständig entkoppelt werden.
This paper explores cross-national public perceptions and beliefs about taxes and redistribution of income. Our main concern is whether the welfare regimes and the national tax policies can explain attitudinal variance. Despite our larger database and somewhat different measures, our study array neatly in the line of research, which are not able to declare any significant and systematic policy explanation of variations in public beliefs about taxation. The publics in countries with large tax-loads did not state that they found taxes particularly large, and variation in public perception could not be determined either by welfare regime or tax-rates in the country. Support of progressive taxation did not vary according to how progressive the tax system in the country was. To the contrary, we detected a negative relationship between tax progressivity and support of progressive taxation.
Anhand einer empirischen Untersuchung der Folgen der Senkung des Einkommensteuertarifs durch die rot-grüne Regierung werden die für eine verteilungspolitische Wertung geeigneten Maßstäbe der Steuerlastumverteilung und der Einkommensumverteilung diskutiert. Dabei wird aufgezeigt, welchen Einfluss die Wahl des Bewertungsmaßstabs für die Interpretation der Ergebnisse hat. Es wird herausgearbeitet,dass eine allein auf die Nettoeinkommensverteilung fokussierte Wertung problematisch ist, da die Implikationen einer derartigen Steuerpolitik mit den primären Aufgaben der Einkommensbesteuerung in Konflikt stehen. Zur verteilungspolitischen Beurteilung von Steuerrechtsänderungen scheint der Maßstab der Steuer(last)umverteilung besser geeignet.
In der vorliegenden Studie werden die sozialpolitischen Reformen in den USA und Kanada während der 1990er Jahren in einer vergleichenden Perspektive analysiert. Dabei wird insbesondere die Rolle steuerpolitischer Instrumentarien in den Reformen thematisiert und der Frage nachgegangen, ob sich hier ein neuer Typ von Wohlfahrtsstaat herausbildet. Im ersten Teil des Papiers wird das in der vergleichenden Wohlfahrtsstaatsforschung etablierte Modell des liberalen Wohlfahrtsstaats skizziert, um vor diesem Hintergrund die Reformen in den USA und Kanada zu untersuchen und zu vergleichen. Anschließend wird in einer breiteren vergleichenden Perspektive die out-put-Leistung der beiden Wohlfahrtsstaaten analysiert. Al normative Kriterien hierbei gilt in erster Linie die Umverteilungsfunktion sozialpolitischer Instrumentarien, hier in erster Linie verstanden als Einkommensumverteilung.
Why, contrary to Meltzer and Richard's prediction (1981), do nations with low levels of wage inequality have large welfare states? Why in turn, consistently with MR (1981), do many of these same nations have large levels of market income inequality? This paper points to the role of second order effects of redistributive policies as the key to solve the theoretical puzzle posed by these to empirical phenomena. The first half of the paper introduces the notion of several orders of incidence of redistribution as well as a theoretical discussion of the two major mechanisms through which second order effects take place: the impact of redistribution on labor supply and the interaction between these second order effects and different institutional aspects of advanced industrial societies, most prominently the collective bargaining institutions. Thereafter the argument is tested by analyzing the determinants of wage and market income inequality in 15 OECD nations between 1980 and 1995.
This paper analyzes the processes of distribution and redistribution in post-industrial democracies. We combine a pooled time series data base on welfare state effort and its determinants assembled by Huber, Ragin, and Stephens (1997) with data on income distribution assembled in the Luxembourg Income Survey (LIS) archive. In the case of the LIS data, we re-calculate the micro-data in order to remove the distorting influence of pensioners on pre-tax, pre transfer income distribution. We examine the determinants of three dependent variables: pre-tax, pre-transfer income inequality, post- tax, post transfer income inequality and the proportional reduction in inequality from pre to post tax and transfer inequality. We hypothesized that pre-tax, pre-transfer income inequality would be determined by labor market institutions (union density, bargaining centralization), labor market conditions (unemployment), and economic structures (post-industrialism, third world imports). We hypothesized that the reduction in inequality would be determined by political configurations: directly by left government and indirectly via their effect on welfare state generosity by left government and Christian democratic government. Post tax and transfer income inequality was hypothesized to be a product of the combination of labor market variables and political variables. The results broadly confirms our hypotheses and the overall fit is very good.
During the last decade, few issues have generated as much debate among scholars, policy-makers and political activists as the relationship between economic globalization and domestic income inequality in the developed world. The central aim of this paper is to offer an empirical assessment of the impact of economic globalization on the distribution of income generated by the market and the ability and willingness of states to redistribute it. Three basic analyses will be conducted. The first and most extensive is an unbalanced pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis of the international and domestic sources of cross-national variance in income distribution and redistribution for various years between the early 1980s and the early 1990s. This analysis will employ measures of post-government disposable income, pre-government earnings and fiscal redistribution that have been calculated from household-level income surveys available from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), which provides by far the most comprehensive, detailed and accurate cross-national data on income inequality currently available. The second analysis will offer a full-scale pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis of less complete and comparable annual data from non-LIS sources on pre-government wage dispersion between 1970 and 1990. Finally, the paper will examine trends over an even longer period in the distribution of post-government income in a single country, the United States, for which reliable annual figures are available for the period from 1967 to 1996. Among the questions addressed in the paper are the following: Is integration into the world economy systematically related to domestic income inequality across countries or over time? Can any economic dislocation resulting from globalization be ameliorated by the redistributive activities of the state? Are there differences in the impact of the three main modes of international integration, trade, direct foreign investment and global financial flows? To what extent are income distribution and redistribution the product of essentially domestic political variables not directly associated with economic globalization?
Die Zunahme des internationalen Handels und der internationalen Kapitalbewegungen wird oft für einen Abbau sozialstaatlicher Umverteilung verantwortlich gemacht. In dieser Arbeit wird die Frage untersucht, ob die wachsende Internationalisierung der Wirtschaft zu einer Einschränkung der staatlichen Einkommensumverteilung und zu einem Abbau sozialer Leistungen führt. Neben einer umfassenden theoretischen Diskussion wird der Zusammenhang von Globalisierung und Sozialpolitik empirisch untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass eine Gefährdung des Sozialstaats vom zunehmenden internationalen Handel ausgeht, nicht aber vom stärker wachsenden internationalen Kapitalverkehr. Mit Hilfe von Ansätzen der Neuen Wirtschaftsgeografie kann dieses Ergebnis auch theoretisch erklärt werden.
Die Zunahme des internationalen Handels und der internationalen Kapitalbewegungen wird oft für einen Abbau sozialstaatlicher Umverteilung verantwortlich gemacht. In dieser Arbeit wird die Frage untersucht, ob die wachsende Internationalisierung der Wirtschaft zu einer Einschränkung der staatlichen Einkommensumverteilung und zu einem Abbau sozialer Leistungen führt. Neben einer umfassenden theoretischen Diskussion wird der Zusammenhang von Globalisierung und Sozialpolitik empirisch untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass eine Gefährdung des Sozialstaats vom zunehmenden internationalen Handel ausgeht, nicht aber vom stärker wachsenden internationalen Kapitalverkehr. Mit Hilfe von Ansätzen der Neuen Wirtschaftsgeografie kann dieses Ergebnis auch theoretisch erklärt werden.
The linkage between liberal democracy and income inequality has been the subject of considerable empirical research. However, the literature has largely ignored advances in the techniques for measuring income distribution which help to improve and strengthen the robustness of research findings in this field. by drawing upon recent developments in data collection and formal analyses, this paper explores inequality trends in selected Western democracies over the 1970s and 1980s. The results indicate that the gap between rich and poor is widening in some countries but not in all, thus pointing to the role of national policies in the redistribution of income. Conventional models grounded on demand driven policies persuasively explain declining income inequality, yet fail to account for the rising trends in the 1980s. Reasons for this failure are the omission of political 'slack' as a key dimension in redistributive options and the fallacy of linearity. The paper shows that despite significant progress, we are still not in a position to be confident of our theories and methods.
What has happened to incomes, inequality and satisfaction with living standards in the first stage of transition from a communist command economy to a market economy in East Germany? This paper tests six hypotheses about the transition to capitalism. Contrary to expectations, real incomes went up not down, net income inequality scarcely increased, and those who were previously advantaged did not become better off aí the expense of the previously disadvantaged. A major reason for the last two results was that the Federal Republic's taxes and benefits, which were much more progressive than the Communist regime's, had the effect of counteracting the increasing inequality of household gross incomes. It is also reported that, although real net incomes increased, satisfaction with living standards declined, probably because East Germans increasingly compared themselves with Western counterparts. Optimism about the future declined in 1991-2 after reaching very high levels in 1990 immediately after the revolution. This paper is based on the first three waves of the East German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) conducted in June 1990 (N= 4453 respondents in 2179 households), March-April 1991 and March-April 1992.
Germany has lower posttax income inequality than the United States and hence is doing better according to a strict egalitarian fairness ideal. On the other hand, the United States is doing better than Germany according to a libertarian fairness ideal, which states that people should be held fully responsible for their income. However, most people hold intermediate (responsibility-sensitive) positions, and hence it is interesting to study and compare fairness according to these positions. We find that the ranking of the two countries according to the intermediate positions depends on the treatment of the unexplained variation in the income equation. If we hold people responsible for the residual, the United States is considered fairer than Germany for all levels of responsibility sensitivity. If we, however, demand compensation for the residual, Germany is fairer than the United States for all levels of responsibility. The latter may be seen as the preferred approach as it follows a `benefit of the doubt' strategy.
Three decades ago, Canada and the United States shared almost identical relative poverty and inequality levels. Yet despite experiencing similar macro-level social and economic transformations from 1974 to 1994 , the two nations have experienced diametrically opposite trends in relative household poverty. While levels of poverty increased in the U.S. during this period, Canada has experienced declining household poverty. Several institutional economists have utilized the comparative case of Canada to emphasize the important role of one kind of institution for explaining differences in poverty or inequality rates at one point in time i . These economists have presented compelling evidence that institutional differences, and not broader cultural or economic differences, explain the poverty and inequality differences between Canada and the U.S. in the late 1980s. These institutional differences include unionization policy and social welfare packages. Yet despite the importance of these institutional differences for explaining differences in poverty or inequality levels at one point in time, my analysis of Luxembourg Income Survey (LIS) data on Canada and the U.S. over this period clearly demonstrates that it is the different ways each nation has reformed their transfer systems over this period, and not other institutional differences or reforms, that comprehensively explain the divergent trends in relative household poverty rates from 1974 to 1994. My analysis utilizes harmonized LIS data to identify the relative explanatory strength of different facets of the transfer systems for explaining the divergence in poverty from 1974-1994. Surprisingly, the breakdown analysis reveals that the divergent trends can largely be explained by differences in the structure and reform of each nation's Social Retirement benefits, a factor not mentioned as an explanatory factor in the previous literature. Differences in other 'Social Insurance' transfers and 'Means-Tested' benefits together also helped explain the divergence in poverty trends, but with less power than expected. The increased effectiveness of the Canadian transfers for reducing its relative household poverty rate compared to the American system over this period has consequences for explaining divergence in inequality and possibly health outcomes and other measures of well-being between these two nations.