Suchergebnisse

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?

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.

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.

The purpose of the paper is to find out what kind of impact different structural factors have on the one hand, poverty and, on the other hand, income transfers. These structural factors have been operationalised as changes in economy, employment and demography. The countries under comparison represent different welfare state models. The analysis shows that when we look at the impact of structural factors on poverty, we find out the difference between demographic variables used: the rate of under 15 years old increases poverty, while the rate of persons 65 years and older decreases it. If the dependent variable - instead of poverty - is income transfers, the result is the opposite. This can be explained by the fact that social policy has primarily been pension policy and this has improved especially the situation of old people. In many countries the development of family policy is just beginning and at present poverty is a threat to quite a few society groups such as single parents and families with children.

Can income equality be combined with high economic efficiency and rapid economic growth? Fortunately, we need not to answer such a general question. Indeed, the question is poorly phrased. The relationship between income and wealth distribution, on one hand, and efficiency/growth, on the other, depends on how a certain distribution of income and wealth has come about.

We investigate the consequences of redistribution policy on migration and trade in a Standard two-good Heckscher-Ohlin framework. With free trade and factor price equalization, abolishing migration barriers is redundant. With the introduction of government activity, matters change drastically. Redistributive policies create an incentive to migrate in the country providing higher transfers. We show that in such a world, free migration increases the bürden of the welfare program in the rieh country and causes suboptimal national redistribution policies in both countries. It is definitively in the interest of the rieh country to stop short of a relaxation of migration barriers. Rather, a pure free trade regime without migration proves to be preferable.

The proposal involves the establishment of 'welfare accounts' for every person in a country. There are to be four accounts: a retirement account (covering pensions), an unemployment account (covering unemployment support), a human capital account (covering education and training), and a health account (covering insurance against sickness and disability). Instead of the current welfare state systems - where welfare services are financed predominantly out of general taxes - people would make ongoing, mandatory contributions to each of these welfare accounts. The balances in these accounts would cover people's major welfare needs. The government is to set mandatory minimum contribution rates and maximum withdrawal rates from the accounts. The government is to have two budgetary systems: one in which non-welfare expenditures are financed through the existing array of taxes, and another system in which the public-sector expenditures on welfare services are financed through payments from people's welfare accounts. The government would be able to redistribute income across people's welfare accounts, but these redistributions would be constrained to be of the balanced-budget variety: total (economy-wide) taxes on each of the welfare accounts would be equal to total transfers into each of accounts. The public and private sectors would provide welfare services on an equal footing, setting prices for these services and competing with one another for the custom of the welfare account holders. We argue that moving from the current welfare state systems to a welfare account system may be expected to play a substantial role in reducing unemployment, encouraging labour force participation, promoting skills, reducing governments' budgetary pressures, cushioning people against economic risks, ensuring efficient provision of health and education services, providing social safety nets and redistributing incomes more efficiently.