Suchergebnisse

There are growing fears that post-industrial society will produce a new class of permanent losers, a modern-day lumpen proletariat. The catch, however, is that an erosion of social protection threatens not only the losers but, even more importantly, also the winners. The single greatest challenge to the welfare state today lies in the need to rethink its classical assumptions about work, family and social risk. Social protection has been inordinately biased in favour of the elderly (who were the traditional high-risk poverty group), and this bias has been strengthened as welfare states sought to manage unemployment with early retirement. In contrast, for young families who now experience a host of new risks, welfare states tend to be passive.

"Die Befürchtungen nehmen zu, daß die post-industrielle Gesellschaft eine neue Klasse von ständigen Verlierern produziert, ein modernes Lumpenproletariat. Das Problem dabei ist jedoch, daß ein Verlust der sozialen Sicherung nicht nur die Verlierer betrifft, sondern in bedeutendem Umfang auch die sog. Gewinner. Die größte Herausforderung des Wohlfahrtstaates liegt heutzutage in der Notwendigkeit, die klassischen Begriffe von Arbeit, Familie und sozialen Risiken zu überdenken. Soziale Sicherung war vorwiegend für ältere Personen ausgerichtet (die traditionsgemäß die risikoreichste Armutsgruppe darstellte). Diese Ausrichtung wurde verstärkt, da der Wohlfahrtstaat davon ausging, die Arbeitslosigkeit mit dem Vorruhestand in den Griff zu bekommen. Im Gegensatz dazu bleibt der Wohlfahrtstaat passiv gegenüber jungen Familien, die heute mit einer Reihe von neuen Risiken konfrontiert sind." (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku)

The deteriorating trend in the incomes of families with young children is of increasing concern to both academics and politicians. Since the well-being of the elderly has improved concomitantly, many see an emerging generational clash. We argue that this zero-sum distributional trade-off view is largely premised on an overly static analysis and prefer, as an alternative, to examine the age-distribution of well-being through the lens of cohort dynamics. The aim of this article is very policy applied, an attempt to identify a win-win policy model that simultaneously ensures child and elderly welfare. We argue that social investments in children now will have strong and positive secondary effects in terms of helping maintain welfare guarantees for the elderly in the future. The key lies in minimizing child poverty, and we evaluate which policy mix may prove most effective for this end. We conclude that, in most countries, the elimination of poverty in families with children would be surprisingly affordable.