Rich Democracies Research Articles

The Role of Single Motherhood in America's High Child Poverty

Many claim a high prevalence of single motherhood plays a significant role in America's high child poverty. Using the Luxembourg Income Study, we compare the “prevalences and penalties” for child poverty across 30 rich democracies and within the United States over time (1979–2019). Several descriptive patterns contradict the importance of single motherhood. The U.S. prevalence of single motherhood is cross-nationally moderate and typical and is historically stable. Also, child poverty and the prevalence of single motherhood have trended in opposite directions in recent decades in the United States. More important than the prevalence of single motherhood, the United States stands out for having the highest penalty across 30 rich democracies. Counterfactual simulations demonstrate that reducing single motherhood would not substantially reduce child poverty. Even if there was zero single motherhood, (1) the United States would not change from having the fourth-highest child poverty rate, (2) the 41-year trend in child poverty would be very similar, and (3) the extreme racial inequalities in child poverty would not decline. Rather than the prevalence of single motherhood, the high penalty for single motherhood and extremely high Black and Latino child poverty rates, which exist regardless of single motherhood, are far more important to America's high child poverty.

Do minimum wages crowd out union density?

AbstractMinimum wage legislation has spread across rich democracies in recent decades in response to rising inequality and in‐work poverty. However, there are concerns that state regulation of wages could reduce incentives to join a union. We empirically test this crowding out hypothesis, using (1) an event‐study macro‐level analysis of trade union density in 19 advanced capitalist countries between 1960 and 2017 and (2) a multi‐level analysis of 32 countries (1981−2020) where we use individual‐level union membership as dependent variable. We find no evidence that statutory minimum wage adoption crowds out union density. We also test whether the most vulnerable groups of employees (young, low‐skilled and low‐income) have a lower propensity to join a union when a minimum wage is introduced but find no effect either.

Disciplinary welfare and the punitive turn in criminal justice: Parallel trends or communicating vessels?

When it comes to the relationship between social policy and penal policy, existing scholarship often focuses on the penal–welfare tradeoff, according to which countries with large and generous welfare states tend to have lower incarceration rates and less harsh treatment of offenders. We know much less about the relationship between the punitive turn in criminal justice and the use of discipline within social policy. Has there been a parallel trend of law-and-order policies and stricter benefit conditionality, a kind of ‘criminalization’ of welfare beneficiaries, as critical scholarship suggests? We test this idea for the first time with quantitative data, using public spending on public order and safety and unemployment benefit conditionality data for 18 rich democracies between 1990 and 2012, that is, the period when a punitive turn as well as the rise of activation and workfare is said to have taken place. Contrary to the critical literature, we do not find evidence of parallel trends toward more discipline in both areas, but rather a negative relationship of ‘communicating vessels’, where a greater use of disciplinary tools in social policy is associated with stagnating or even shrinking spending on police and prisons. Moreover, this pattern tends to emerge under conditions of higher welfare state generosity. These findings have important implications about the role of state ‘discipline’ in contemporary policymaking.

Fiscal Impoverishment in Rich Democracies

Abstract This article introduces fiscal impoverishment as a framework for comparative poverty research. We invert standard analyses of welfare state policy and household poverty by focusing not on poverty alleviation but poverty creation and exacerbation. Using harmonized household survey data, we show how the income and payroll taxes most rich countries rely on to finance the public sector serve to push households (further) into poverty. We estimate that across rich democracies on average about one in four households in poverty are made poorer on net after taxes and transfers; with fiscal impoverishment levels ranging from <10% in some countries to more than 70% in others, revealing extreme cross-national variation in how the pocketbooks of poor households are impacted by national tax and transfer policy. We go on to show that fiscal impoverishment does not track with standard measures of welfare state generosity but is instead largely determined by design of income tax systems, particularly a country’s relative reliance on (regressive) payroll taxes versus (progressive) income taxes. We consider the implications of fiscal impoverishment for assessing welfare state performance and for comparative poverty research.

Poverty, not the poor.

This review explains how and why the United States has systemically high poverty. Descriptive evidence shows that U.S. poverty is (i) a huge share of the population, (ii) a perennial outlier among rich democracies, (iii) staggeringly high for certain groups, (iv) unexpectedly high for those who "play by the rules," and (v) pervasive across various groups and places. This review then discusses and critiques three prevailing approaches focused on the individual poor rather than the systemically high poverty: (i) behavioral explanations "fixing the poor," (ii) emotive compassion "dramatizing the poor," and (iii) cultural explanations both dramatizing and fixing the poor. The essay then reviews political explanations that emphasize the essential role of social policy generosity, political choices to penalize risks, power resources of collective political actors, and institutions. This review demonstrates a long emerging but ascending and warranted shift away from individualistic explanations of the poor toward political explanations of poverty.

Does income inequality worsen pollution? The GEMS air pollution data revisited

Research on the effect of income inequality on pollution shows mixed results. This paper takes a new look at the urban air pollution data set of the U.N.‘s Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS). We investigate the impact of income inequality on urban air pollution and relate the results to a median-voter model. In this model, more income inequality decreases the median income, reduces pollution controls, and increases output and pollution when the median income is above a threshold. We find that income inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, increases SO2 concentration in the rich democracies. The estimated effects are non-negligible in size. For the poor non-democracies, we find no evidence that the Gini coefficient impacts SO2 concentration. The Gini coefficient is estimated to increase the smoke concentration at the five- or ten-percent significance level in most specifications in a pooled sample. We find no evidence that the Gini coefficient impacts the concentration of particulates in a pooled sample. We conclude that the empirical results largely are consistent with the median-voter model.

Does inequality erode political trust?

A long-standing argument in the political sciences holds that high levels of inequality are incompatible with democracy. Although a number of studies have by now investigated whether income inequality endangers democratic consolidation and stability through corroding popular support, the findings remain inconclusive. This study provides new evidence for a sociotropic effect of macroeconomic income inequality on trust in the institutions of representative democracy by making use of therandom effects within betweenspecification in multilevel models for data from 28 European democracies over a period of 16 years. The findings show that both long-standing differences in income inequality between countries and changes in inequality within countries over time are negatively related to trust in institutions. While the spirit-level thesis states that this effect should be more pronounced among rich democracies, the findings show that the effect of inequality is stronger in countries that are less affluent. Further analyses on whether the social-psychological mechanism proposed by the spirit-level thesis mediates the effect of inequality on trust document a partial transmission via status concerns and social trust. However, the study suggests that income inequality primarily influences trust in institutions through evaluation-based processes as captured by economic evaluations.

Too WEIRD, Too Fast? Preprints About COVID-19 in the Psychological Sciences

That behavioral sciences are overrepresented by some countries, in terms of samples and authors, is a well-documented finding. Considering the immediate policy implications, the present study explored whether this bias also exists for research on the coronavirus pandemic. Preprints posted on PsyArXiv between two time periods in 2020 (March-April and May-December) with keywords related to “COVID-19” were sourced and their participant and author composition were assessed. Western and rich democracies were overrepresented in terms of authors and participants; preprints posted by authors from western and democratic countries were cited more and were published in journals with a higher impact factor. Implications, especially regarding a reductionist bifurcation of research as “WEIRD” or “non-WEIRD,” are discussed.

Political Inequality in Rich Democracies

In this review, we focus on political inequality in rich democracies. In the two main sections, we look at participation and representation, respectively. The former discusses whether rising income inequality and the weakening of trade unions have led to higher levels of inequality in participation. The latter looks at substantive and descriptive representation and asks how they might be linked. Research highlights that people with fewer individual resources participate much less than those with more resources, and collective organizations lose their ability to counter these trends. In terms of representation, the pattern is very similar. Not only are the opinions of decision-makers more congruent with those of the better off but policy choices also reflect their preferences more clearly. As the social distance between rulers and ruled increases, representative democracy gets more biased in favor of higher-status social groups.

Indebted societies credit and welfare in rich democracies. By AndreasWiedemann, Cambridge University Press

GovernanceVolume 36, Issue 2 p. 677-686 BOOK REVIEW Indebted societies credit and welfare in rich democracies. By Andreas Wiedemann, Cambridge University Press Elsa Clara Massoc, Elsa Clara Massoc [email protected] SEPS - University of St Gallen, St. Gallen, SwitzerlandSearch for more papers by this author Elsa Clara Massoc, Elsa Clara Massoc [email protected] SEPS - University of St Gallen, St. Gallen, SwitzerlandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 March 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12774Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume36, Issue2April 2023Pages 677-686 RelatedInformation

Book Review: Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well-Being in Rich Democracies

Book Review: Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well-Being in Rich Democracies

The Politics of Tax Justice in Democracies: Redistribution Beyond the Median Voter Theorem

Democratic states tend to raise large shares of national income through taxes, and spend the money in ways which redistribute resources from higher to lower income groups. This connection between democratic politics and taxes is a commonplace of the political economy scholarship, but there is much less clarity about the mechanisms through which this redistribution occurs, and the reasons for variations in the degree to which the objectives of social justice are achieved. Democracy can coexist with quite large differences in overall income inequality, and these differences are often driven by institutional legacies that find their roots in the past. The scope for the usual tools of democratic governance – elections and political party programmes – to alter these paths are more limited than is often understood. The contemporary politics of taxation appears to offer very constrained choices to policymakers, but the aspirations of voters for redistribution through the tax system remain a fundamental feature of political competition and conflict in the rich democracies.

Follow the Leader

How much should we worry about democracy in the world today? Building on Brownlee and Miao's useful interjection that rich democracies (still) don't die, this essay offers some alternative ways to approach the threat faced by wealthy democracies, in addition to the critical role of the macroeconomic structural factors that they highlight. The essay advocates for more attention to the possibility that democracy can weaken in consequential ways short of death, how leaders damage institutions without destroying them, and the crucial role that citizens can play in replenishing democratic resilience.

Poverty, Prevalences, and Penalties in U.S. States, 1993-2016

ABSTRACT Poverty is unevenly distributed within the United States – – a fact demonstrated by a rich literature on inequality in the US. By ignoring such variation, research runs the risk of overlooking the geographical distribution of poverty and risks that increase the likelihood of poverty. In this article, I address this by: (1) building on the prevalence and penalties framework, developed in cross-national scholarship, and applying it to the U.S. case given state autonomy in poverty policy; and (2) conducting longitudinal analyses using high-quality data derived from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS-ASEC). Through these analyses, I examine the extent of interstate variation in poverty and in the prevalence of risks and the penalties associated with those risks. Results confirm interstate variation in poverty similar to that seen across rich democracies – the focus of much cross-national comparative work – and demonstrate sizable differences in risks and their associated penalties that have grown rapidly since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. These findings have substantial implications for scholars and policymakers interested in understanding poverty and vulnerability in the United States.

Indebted Societies: Credit and Welfare in Rich Democracies. By Andreas Wiedemann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 350p. $110.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.

Indebted Societies: Credit and Welfare in Rich Democracies. By Andreas Wiedemann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 350p. $110.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.

Polarity Reversal: The Socioeconomic Reconfiguration of Partisan Support in Knowledge Societies

This article proposes a framework to analyze realignment processes in countries that transition from industrial to knowledge societies. It characterizes the electorate in terms of two traits that are main predictors for attitudes in a two-dimensional policy space of economic and noneconomic issues: income (low vs. high) and education (low vs. high). The framework divides the electorate into four groups—based on the interaction of these two dichotomized traits—and predicts how and when the voting propensities of these four groups change over time. Using a wide variety of data sources, the article tests hypotheses regarding changing voting behavior of education-income groups, as well as cross-national differences across twenty-one rich democracies.

The Political Economy of Intermediate Capital Account Regimes: a Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Contrary to expectations, the global push for liberalizing reforms during the 1980s and 1990s did not abolish policy diversity in regard to capital flow management. Even though many countries fully opened their capital accounts, there remain several examples of divergence, which go from the maintenance of high levels of capital controls to partial liberalization. Against this background, relying on data from 84 countries between 1995 and 2017, this article uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to shed light on the conditions underlying different capital account regimes. In line with the Polanyian theoretical framework, findings reveal that two kinds of causal paths paved the way for intermediate regimes: the statist path was followed by right-leaning authoritarian regimes that attempted to combine the integration into global markets with the maintenance of control over the domestic private sector; the pluralist path was observed where either manufacturing industries or popular sectors were strong enough to motivate the reregulation of capital flows. Conversely, findings show that extreme regimes such as open and closed ones were associated with homogenous conditions like, respectively, leftist authoritarian regimes and rich democracies with stable economies.

Book Review: Democracy without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society

<p>書評重整作者的論點(美國傳媒過度商業化、低管制與公共媒體規模太小)，同意擴大公服媒最能更新美國的傳播與民主。其次，該書重視美國憲法第一修正案的積極面向，要求立法促進新聞自由，如美國政府曾大量補助報業，二戰後美國曾協助德日公共媒體的建設。最後，本書評另以註解補充三點:(1)聯邦傳播委員會主委在1980年代雖挺市場，但已承認市場失靈並提補助構想;(2)美國至今仍是報業補助大國;(3)記者等工會活動近來在美國強化的原因。</p> <p> </p><p>This book review has three components. First, Professor Pickard’s main argument is reconstructed in a condensed way, and the expanded public service media is concluded to provide a necessary, although insufficient, antidote to the United States’ over-commercialized and least regulated media system as compared with those of other rich and liberal democracies. Second, two crucial arguments that merit more attention are identified. The First Amendment may allow the state to actively strengthen press freedom. And the United States government’s active supports had been fundamental to subsidizing delivery systems for the American press and the transformation of post-war German and Japanese broadcasters into public service media. Finally, endnotes are provided that supplement and emphasize two critical facts: the most market-oriented FCC chairman did recognize the possibilities of market failure and proposed remedies accordingly, and America’s local governments have always given considerable subsidies to the publishing industry. Possible reasons are discussed to explain the recent expansion of labor coverage and news unions across the United States.</p> <p> </p>

Who cares what the people think? Public attitudes and refugee protection in Europe

This paper discusses why and how public attitudes should matter in regulating asylum and refugee protection in rich democracies, with a focus on Europe. Taking a realistic approach, I argue that public views constitute a soft feasibility constraint on effective and sustainable policies towards asylum seekers and refugees, and that a failure to take seriously and understand the attitudes of the host country’s population can have a very damaging effect on refugee protection and migrants’ rights in practice. Bringing together insights from political philosophy, the politics of asylum, and research on public attitudes, I develop my argument by discussing why ‘what the people think’ should matter in asylum and refugee polices; how public views can and should matter given the well-known challenges with measuring attitudes and policy preferences; and what the prevailing public views might mean for the reform of asylum and refugee policies in Europe.

Political Economy and Media Ecology of Trumpism: A Contribution to the Study of Anti-systemic Politics

Concepts developed in the field of political economy offer a useful framework for explaining, from a western perspective, the phenomenon of Trumpism as an expression of anti-system politics emerging rich democracies in response to the effects of neoliberal growth models and the cartel forms of political parties. While insightful, this theory does not account for the role of media in presumed relationships. The article aims to offer, through exploratory analysis, the theoretical basis for conceptualization of the links between media, anti-system politics, and growth models. Trumpism developed, we argue, under the conditions of destabilization of traditional institutional arrangements of the news business, which enabled and limited the functions of journalism important for the democratization of the „Western“society. The paper contributes to the development of an alternative theoretical approach to the study of the media aspect of Trumpism concerning the prevailing corpus of ideas about "post-truth", "false news" and "echo chambers".