Social Democratic America (31 page)

71
. This updates figure 1.1 in Ellwood and Jencks 2004.

72
. McLanahan and Sandefur 1994; McLanahan 2001.

73
. Ellwood and Jencks 2004, p. 9. According to Charles Murray (2012a, p. 158): “No matter what the outcome being examined—the quality of the mother-infant relationship, externalizing behavior in childhood (aggression, delinquency, and hyperactivity), delinquency in adolescence/criminality as adults, illness and injury in childhood, early mortality, sexual decision making in adolescence, school problems and dropping out, emotional health, or any other measure of how well or poorly children do in life—the family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain
married. Divorced parents produce the next-best outcomes. Whether the parents remarry or remain single while the children are growing up makes little difference. Never-married women produce the worst outcomes. All of these statements apply after controlling for the family's socioeconomic status.”

74
. Census Bureau, “Historical Income Tables,”
www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical
, tables F-12 and H-12.

75
. Douthat and Salam 2008, p. 53.

76
. Edin and Kefalas 2005; Cherlin 2009, ch. 7; England and Edin 2009.

77
. Ellwood and Jencks 2004; Edin and Kefalas 2005; Cherlin 2009, ch. 7; England and Edin 2009; Haskins and Sawhill 2009, ch. 10; Wilson 2009, ch. 4; Conger, Conger, and Martin 2010; Isen and Stevenson 2010; England, McClintock, and Shafer 2012; England, Wu, and Shafer 2012; Murray 2012a, ch. 8; Nelson and Edin 2013.

78
. Ellwood and Jencks 2004, figure 1.13. See also England and Edin 2009.

79
. Douthat and Salam 2008, ch. 7; Haskins and Sawhill 2009, ch. 10.

80
. Improving the financial incentive for marriage was a key aim of the mid-1990s welfare reform. See DeParle 2004. But it hasn't worked. AFDC-TANF benefit levels have been falling steadily and substantially since the 1970s, with no impact on the trend in family dissolution among less-educated Americans. See Aber et al. 1994; Moffitt and Scholz 2009.

An advertising and messaging campaign might help a bit, but I doubt it will yield much progress. Yes, similar campaigns helped reduce smoking and teen births. But marriage is different. We have strong evidence that smoking and teen parenthood are bad for the decision maker. The evidence is less overwhelming that avoiding or exiting marriage is bad for the person doing so. It tends to be bad for children, but it may or may not be bad for the adults. Also, smoking is an (addictive) activity, whereas marriage is a relationship. A partner or spouse who treats you poorly or cheats on you may be less tolerable than a daily routine without cigarettes.

The Healthy Marriages Initiative, which ran from 2005 to 2010, provided marital counseling and support for vulnerable couples. A thorough review found no noteworthy beneficial impact. See Wood et al. 2012; also Furstenberg 2008.

81
. Cherlin 2009.

82
. Ibid.; England and Edin 2009, chs. 1, 3, 6; Wilson 2009, ch. 4.

83
. Sawhill 2002.

84
. Wilson 1987, 1996, 2009.

85
. Edin and Kefalas 2005.

86
. Douthat and Salam 2008.

87
. OECD 2001; Rønsen 2001; Rønsen and Sundstrom 2002; Morgan and Zippel 2003; Gangl and Ziefle 2012.

88
. Edin and Kefalas 2005.

89
. In Sweden the home-care allowance is used much more frequently by immigrant mothers, who because of language and education deficits have weaker labor market prospects than native-born women. See Earles 2011.

90
. See chapter 2.

91
. Mayer 1999.

92
. Tocqueville 1840; Putnam 2000; Skocpol 2003; Brooks 2012b; Murray 2012a.

93
. Putnam 1993a, 1993b, 2000.

94
. Putnam 2000, figure 8.

95
. Anderson et al. 2006.

96
. Skocpol 2003.

97
. Esping-Andersen 1990.

98
. E.g., Esping-Andersen 1999.

99
. The social democratic world is sometimes called “socialist” or “universalist.” The conservative world is sometimes called “corporatist” or “social insurance.” The liberal world is sometimes called “residual.”

100
. Hicks and Kenworthy 2003. See also Esping-Andersen 2003. These findings hold if the elements fed into the statistical analysis are expanded beyond traditional social insurance programs to include labor market policies and work-family policies.

101
. Pension payments are a significant portion of government transfers in all rich countries. In one interpretation, counting public pensions in a measure of targeting-universalism or redistribution is misleading, because pension programs are best conceptualized as forced saving. The government requires employed citizens to put money away during their working years and then returns it to them (with interest) in their retirement years. In retirement, many people have no income from employment, so the pension they receive appears in the calculations as though it is going to a very poor household. According to this view, the measures therefore overstate the degree of targeting and the degree of redistribution achieved by transfers. Peter Whiteford (2008, 2009) has attempted to address this concern by calculating targeting-universalism and redistribution using households' position in the income distribution
after
transfers are added and taxes subtracted, rather than before. If a retired couple's income consists solely of a public pension payment, they will be at the very bottom of the distribution according to the calculations in figure 4.19. In Whiteford's calculations they instead might be at the twentieth percentile or even higher, depending on the size of their pension. In these calculations, Australia remains the most targeting-heavy of the rich nations, but it ranks higher on redistribution than in figure 4.19.

102
. Korpi and Palme 1998; Kim 2000; Pontusson 2005.

103
. Kenworthy 2011c, ch. 6; Marx et al. 2012.

104
. Adema 2001; Adema and Ladaique; 2009; Fishback 2010. See also Adema 1997; Howard 1997, 2007; Hacker 2002; Garfinkel, Rainwater, and Smeeding 2010; Gilbert 2010; Mettler 2011.

105
. Kenworthy 2011c, ch. 9; Morgan 2013.

106
. Adema and Ladaique 2009, table 5.5; Fishback 2010, table 5.

107
. One important tax benefit for low-income households is the EITC, but it is already included in the standard OECD data on government social expenditures. Another is the Child Tax Credit, but it is only partially refundable and thus of limited value to low-income households, many of whom don't owe any federal income tax.

108
. They also tend to cost more, due to higher administrative costs and management fees. Graetz and Mashaw 1999; Attewell 2012.

109
. LIS 2012.

110
. Consumption tax rates are higher in the Nordic countries than in the United States. But these are incorporated in the purchasing power parities (PPPs) used to convert incomes to a common currency, so the income numbers in the third row of figure 4.21 are adjusted for differences in consumption taxes.

111
. Kenworthy 2011c, ch. 2.

112
. See also Kenworthy 2011c, ch. 4.

113
. Graetz and Mashaw 1999; Kim et al. 2007.

114
. For more discussion, see Hacker 2002; Hills 2011; Morgan and Campbell 2011; Konczal 2012.

115
. Blair 2010, p. 569.

116
. Emanuel 2013.

117
. Judt 2010.

118
. Kaus 1992.

119
. Gosselin 2008, ch. 10; Kahneman 2011; Kliff 2012.

120
. And those who would like additional coverage are free to purchase it.

121
. Milanovic 2011.

122
. Sen 1999, ch. 4; Sperling 2005; Stiglitz 2006, ch. 3; Collier 2007, ch. 10; Galbraith 2007; Krugman 2007; Rodrick 2007, ch. 9; Blinder 2009b; DeLong 2008; Kristof 2009.

123
. Kenworthy 2008b.

124
. Freeman and Medoff 1984.

125
. In the public sector the unionization rate is 37 percent.

126
. Kruse, Freeman, and Blasi 2008.

127
. Weitzman 1984.

128
. Edelman 2012, p. 32.

129
. Household income tends to be shared (even if not necessarily equally), so it, much more than individual earnings, determines consumption and living standards. Moreover, household income appears to have a stronger effect on happiness than personal earnings; see Firebaugh and Schroeder 2009.

130
. Immervoll and Pearson 2009.

131
. Herzenberg, Alic, and Wial 1998.

132
. E.g., Hall and Soskice 2001; Hall and Gingerich 2004; Barth and Moene 2009.

133
. Pontusson 2011.

134
. Rothstein 1998.

135
. Goodin et al. 1999.

136
. Kenworthy 2008a, ch. 6.

137
. Kenworthy 2008a.

138
. Baumol 1967.

139
. OECD 2008, ch. 9; Esping-Andersen and Myles 2009; Paulus, Sutherland, and Tsakloglou 2009; Garfinkel, Rainwater, and Smeeding 2010; Kenworthy 2011c, ch. 7.

140
. According to Duncan Gallie, among those responding to a mid-1990s survey in various European Union countries, semi-skilled and non-skilled workers were less likely than higher-skilled workers to report being in jobs in which they could “definitely learn new things or exercise significant influence over the way things are done” (Gallie 2002, p. 100). Surveys from a variety of affluent countries suggest an increase in work intensity and work effort in the 1980s and 1990s (Gallie 2002; Green 2006; Kalleberg 2011). Interestingly, in the mid-1990s EU survey there was no difference across skill groupings in the likelihood of experiencing heightened work pressure. But Gallie points out that “there is now a wide body of research that points to the fact that the long-term health effects of increased pressure are likely to be particularly severe among the low-skilled. This is because the impact of work pressure is mediated by the degree of control that employees can exercise over the work task. Where people are allowed initiative to take decisions themselves about how to plan and carry out their work, they prove to be substantially more resilient in the face of high levels of work pressure. It is jobs that combine high demand with low control that pose the highest health risks” (Gallie 2002, p. 105–106).

141
. O'Toole and Lawler 2006.

142
. Gallie 2003. Although not to quite the same extent, Finland's government and interest group organizations also have encouraged greater attention to these issues among employers. Francis Green has examined survey data on employee discretion and influence over their work tasks in the United Kingdom and Finland, the only two countries for which there are comparable data over a number of years. He finds evidence of decreased worker discretion in the UK but increased discretion in Finland. See Green 2006, ch. 5.

143
. Gallie 2002, pp. 120–122.

144
. Presser 2003.

145
. Presser 2003, ch. 9.

146
. Esping-Andersen 1999, 2009; Esping-Andersen et al. 2002; Andersson, Holzer, and Lane 2005; Fitzgerald 2006.

147
. Steensland 2007.

148
. Van Parijs 2001; Murray 2006. For more, see Wright 2010; Widerquist 2013.

149
. Van Parijs 2001, pp. 3, 19.

150
. Moffitt 1981.

151
. Kenworthy 2008a.

152
. See Galston 2001.

153
. Bergmann 2006.

154
. Ackerman and Alstott 1999; Sherraden 2007; Boshara 2009; Cramer and Newville 2009.

155
.
Economist
2013a.

156
. Barr 2012.

157
. Wooldridge 2013.

158
. Alesina and La Ferrara 2005; Alesina, Harnoss, and Rapoport 2013; Kenworthy 2013c. Moreover, the Nordic countries are not as homogenous as is sometimes assumed. For instance, though United States' foreign-born share is larger than Denmark's, it is lower than Sweden's.

159
. Lindert 2004; Baumol, Litan, and Schramm 2007.

1
. Lipset 1996.

2
. Micklethwait and Woolridge 2004, pp. 382, 303.

3
. See also Brooks and Manza 2007.

4
. Pew Research Center, ABC/
Washington Post
, CBS/
New York Times, Los Angeles Times
, reported in Pew Research Center 2011a, pp. 109–110. “Depends” and “don't know” responses omitted.

5
. Gallup 2011. “No opinion” responses omitted.

6
. Pew Research Center 2011a, p. 147.

7
. National Election Study, sda.berkeley.edu/archive.htm.

8
. General Social Survey, sda.berkeley.edu/archive.htm, series conlegis and confed.

9
. General Social Survey, sda.berkeley.edu/archive.htm, series natfarey, nateduc, natheal, and natsoc.

10
. Reported in the data set for Page and Jacobs 2009, series qhc2.

11
. Pew Research Center 2011b, p. 24.

12
. Data set for Page and Jacobs 2009, series qtaxl.

13
. Data set for Page and Jacobs 2009, series qtaxm.

14
. Data set for Page and Jacobs 2009, series qjob4.

15
. General Social Survey, sda.berkeley.edu/archive.htm, series natfare.

16
. Gilens 1999.

17
. Wilentz 2008.

18
. Manza, Heerwig, and McCabe 2012; Kenworthy 2013b.

19
. Page and Shapiro 1983.

20
. Gilens 2012.

21
. Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002.