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Article
The generational conflict reconsidered
Gsta Esping-Andersen* and Sebastian Sarasa,
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Introduction
The eclipse of the 20th century appears to
coincide with the waning of the old industrial
class divide. It remains an open question
whether an alternative class-based stratifica-
* Author to whom correspondence should be sent: Prof. G. Esping-Andersen, Department of Political and
Social Sciences, Universtat Pompeu Fabra, 08005, Barcelona, Spain. [email: gosta.esping@cpis.upf.es]
Journal of European Social Policy 0958-9287 (200202)12:1 Copyright 2002 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand
Oaks and New Delhi, Vol 12 (1): 521; 021560
2.9
2.1
3.4
2.2
7.1
9.4
17.2
8.1
9.5
15.5
19.3
Trend
198090s
0.2
+0.1
0.7
1.6
0.9
+7.1
+7.4
+5.0
0.9
+7.0
+2.5
Extreme poverty
Rate
mid-90s
Trend
198090s
1.3
0.8
1.6
0.9
1.3
4.0
9.4
4.7
3.5
4.7
8.8
0.1
0.1
+0.2
+0.4
1.9
+3.3
+6.0
+4.1
0.3
+2.7
+1.1
Notes: Estimates refer to households with head aged 2555 only. Poverty = 50 (extreme poverty = 33)
percent of median income of all households with children. Estimates based on the new OECD equivalence scale ( = .5).
Source: LIS.
10
Table 2 Working-age population (198595). Trends in inequality of disposable income (Gini), and the
relative impact of trends in earnings and government redistribution
Australia
Canada
UK
USA
Denmark
Finland
Norway
Sweden
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
% Gini
(disposable income)
due to
earnings
inequality
due to
transfersa
due to
taxationb
1.6
+0.1
+3.1
+0.6
0.8
+3.0
+2.1
+2.3
+1.0
+2.4
+3.7
+2.1
+4.6
+1.0
4.4
+3.6
+2.9
4.2
+4.2
+3.6
+3.0
2.1
2.3
+4.2
0.3
0.3
+0.4
+0.3
1.4
1.3
0.3
0.4
0.9
1.7
+0.7
0.3
7.6
5.0
+1.4
0.7
0.1
+0.1
+3.7
5.9
2.4
+1.3
2.1
+3.7
Notes:
a This includes all types of public cash transfer benefits.
b This includes also the value of deductions for tax purposes and tax credits.
Income from capital and self-employment excluded. (Equivalence scale = 0.5.)
The row data do not sum up due to the omission of incomes from self-employment and capital.
Source: OECD data from Oxley et al. (1999).
11
12
families (Duncan et al., 1998). However, childrens well-being improves dramatically when
(and if) lone mothers remarry or cohabit in
either case, the transition almost doubles
household income (Morrison and Ritualo,
2000). The important point here is that we
need to make sharp distinctions by household
type.
Undoubtedly, the growth of womens
employment is mainly driven by higher educational attainment, better earnings prospects,
and by desires for economic independence.
But it is surely also motivated by (young)
males eroding labour market fortunes and
their weakened ability to guarantee adequate
living standards. Today, as always, employment income remains the single most powerful
bulwark against poverty. But at the lower end
of the earnings scale and especially when
households are excluded from employment,
transfer dependency is intensifying. This we
see among the growing number of lone-parent
and no-work households. Yet transfer
dependency can and is being effectively
reduced in some countries by the provision of
child-care services. Unaffordable care can be a
very powerful poverty trap for low-income
families. If, as is typical across much of
Continental Europe (and North America), the
cost of full-time, quality care per child exceeds
a third of mothers expected earnings, the
resulting real tax on her employment becomes
prohibitive (Meyers and Gornick, 2001). The
resulting outcome may be perverse: highincome women will be able to afford care,
low-income women will not, notwithstanding
that the urgency of affordable care is greater
among the latter. Marital homogamy (marriage between a man and woman of similar
social status and background) obviously reinforces such inequalities.
Let us, for analytical purposes, boil the
issue down to two basic factors: the earnings
capacity of households with children (which,
in turn, may be directly related to access to
affordable day care); and the level of social
benefits to which they are entitled (which may
help defray the cost of children). In order to
13
Table 3 Logistic regressions of poverty in families with children. Two-parent households only
(mid-1990s)
Denmark Sweden
1992
1995
USA
1997
UK
1995
France Germany
1994
1994
Italy
1995
Spain
1990
2.08c
2.25c
2.96c
0.72c
2,653
36.81
1.46b
1.32c
1.19
4.24c
1.34c
8.84c
20.28c
3.08c
2.13c
0.35c
1.68c
0.83c
3,975
13,802
1,801
145.26 3,168.72 174.69
0.96
8.27c
4.05c
0.93b
3,617
216.11
1.48c
12.01c
3.03c
0.98
1,811
139.67
1.04
2.04
6.29c
0.05c
904
251.13
0.86
6.42c
1.19
0.18c
701
202.89
1.05
4.32c
1.28
0.23c
256
68.59
1.74c
1.77c
9.09c
6.16c
5.51c
3.02c
0.90c
1.00
2,461
8,892
391.68 658.20
1.93b
2.36
3.01
0.07c
463
191.72
1.07
0.99
1.54c
21.96c
1.94c
1.41
0.42c
0.07c
2,780
384
289.89 159.75
1.73a
5.89c
4.02
0.05c
465
290.92
1.14
4.49c
1.82b
0.12c
1,382
876.50
Notes: Dependent variable : poor (less than 50% median equivalent disposable income). All missing
values and also households with negative final disposable income have been eliminated. Note also that
declared zero transfer income has been altered to 1 (e.g. pta1, or $1) so as to permit log transformations of the transfer income amounts. For measurement details, see Note 2.
a p = < 0.1; b p = < 0.05; c p = < 0.001
Source: LIS databases.
aimed at identifying the ability of social transfers to combat poverty.10 Simply put, the top
part of the table tests the parental employment effect; the lower part, the social transfer effect.
We follow the now typical regime-comparison approach (Esping-Andersen, 1999). To
also capture intra-regime variation, we match
two countries from each of 4 distinct welfare
regimes: the liberal AngloSaxon (UK and the
US), with its tradition of targeted assistance;
the social democratic (Denmark and Sweden),
with its comprehensive, universalistic and
women-friendly approach; the traditional
core conservative Continental model (France
and Germany) in which social benefits are
strongly tied to regular employment; and the
far more rudimentary and residual variant in
Southern Europe (Italy and Spain), where
family policy is unusually undeveloped.
The results are partly predictable, partly
surprising. As one would anticipate, the number of children is positively related to poverty
Journal of European Social Policy 2002 12 (1)
14
Table 4 Logistic regressions of poverty in families with children. Lone-parent households only (mid1990s)
Denmark Sweden
1992
1995
USA
1997
UK
1995
France
1994
1.48b
6.64c
0.63c
470
63.17
1.08
7.55c
0.96
422
62.63
1.43c
1.29
4.76c 24.28c
0.37c
0.01c
2,307
371
301.07 165.79
1.19
13.96c
0.07c
219
77.27
Germany Italy
1994
1995
Spain
1990
1.57
2.33a
0.94
180
9.11
2.37b
4.56c
0.95
150
22.03
1.36a
3.32c
0.96
471
23.66
1.05
1.09
0.29c
90
21.50
0.48
2.86
0.09b
72
42.91
0.70
4.23b
0.15c
214
93.67
1.30
7.80c
0.60b
541
28.76
1.41
1.53c
117.56c
4.58c
0.09c
1.36c
498
3,982
72.11 1,131.45
1.00
18.81c
0.03c
289
77.12
1.02
23.85c
0.02c
267
93.52
15
16
Table 5 The cost of eliminating child povert (national accounting estimates, 1990s)a
Cost base
Number of
poor families
with children (000s)
Denmark (1992)
Sweden (1995)
France (1994)
Italy (1995)
Spain (1990)
UK (1995)
US (1997)
19
25
315
1,033
531
1,210
6,665
Notes:
a Estimates are based on the objective of bringing poor families with children above 50% of the
median-adjusted disposable income line. We ignore the fact that doing this would alter the overall distribution and, thus, also the median.
b Thousand lire.
Source: LIS databases and OECD National Accounts.
17
Conclusions
We have deliberately pitched the analysis in
terms of applied policy relevance. We start
from one indisputable stylized fact, namely
the precarious economic situation of contemporary families with children in many countries. Since the worsening welfare of children
seems to coincide with steady improvements
among the elderly, and given perceived budgetary limits and little room for additional taxation, it is tempting to see the problem in
terms of an impending zero-sum distributive
clash between young and old.
This is a false trade-off if governmental
efforts to minimize child poverty constitute a
positive-sum, or win-win, policy that benefits
the aged too. There are two key arguments
behind this view. First, within a dynamic perspective, the welfare of todays children will
dictate their life chances as adults and, further
ahead, the resources they command when they
reach retirement age. The long-term sustainability of pensions can be better secured by
raising the productivity and labour supply of
the working-age population. All in all, social
expenditures that alleviate child poverty today
arguably constitute a productive investment in
our future. Second, the additional expenditures required may prove surprisingly modest.
Targeted income maintenance to eliminate
child poverty would everywhere be very
cheap. While the universalistic alternative is
far more costly, the value of child allowances
will also help defray part of the cost of child
Journal of European Social Policy 2002 12 (1)
18
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References
Bradbury, B and Jantii, M. (1999) Child Poverty
across the Industrialized World, LIS Working
Paper No. 217, Luxemburg: LIS.
Bradbury, B., Jenkins, S. and Micklewright, J.
(2000) Child Poverty Dynamics in Seven
Nations, paper prepared at conference on
Families, Labour Markets, and the Well-being of
Children (June), Vancouver.
Bradshaw, J. (1999) Child Poverty in Comparative
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