Founded in October 2002, the "Inequality and Social Integration" Research Unit conducts institution-sensitive analyses of social structure that clarify how public policies contribute to shaping the living conditions of specific social groups.

The work during the Unit's first phase from 2002 to 2008 centered on the construction of a comparative data base for the study of quality of life in the enlarged European Union. In collaboration with the "European Foundation for Living and Working Conditions" and with other European research institutes the Unit developed the "European Quality of Life Survey", which went into the field in 28 European countries in 2003 and again in 2007. The results were analyzed and published in several articles and research reports, most notably the Handbook of Quality of Life in the Enlarged European Union (London: Routledge, 2008). The goal of institution-related socio-structural analysis was pursued predominantly in a research project on the living conditions of younger and older generations in four European welfare states that was financed by the Hans Böckler Foundation. Showing a remarkable vitality in family solidarity the results questioned the hypothesis of a coming war between the generations, but also showed a wide variation of social policies across European nations that leave a marked influence on living arrangements. This project's central publication is the book Family and the Welfare State in Europe. Inter-Generational Relations in Ageing Societies published in 2009 by Edward Elgar (German version: Generationenbeziehungen im Wohlfahrtsstaat. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008).

The second and final phase running from 2008 through 2012 now centers on the comparative analysis of income mobility in Europe and the United States. This new phase was initiated by the production of a book analyzing key similarities and differences of state and society in Europe and the U.S. Based on a 2007 conference and edited by Jens Alber and Neil Gilbert, this book came out in 2009 under the title United in Diversity? Comparing Social Models in Europe and America (New York: Oxford University Press). Its key finding is that transatlantic differences are only seldomly more marked than the differences we find between countries in the enlarged European Union.

In the remaining years the core of the unit's research will consist of a project financed by the German Science Association and directed by Ulrich Kohler. This project analyzes the consequences which selected life course risks have on household income in Germany and the United States. Under the direction of the project leader and of the unit director five staff members analyze how market forces, public policies and family efforts (countermobility) combine to cope with the financial consequences of selected key risks such as unemployment, sickness, old age, and family formation or break-up. The research is guided by the question how the buffering of these risks through public policies changed since the 1980s, where and to what extent the hypothesis of a "great risk shift" from collective to private provision applies and to what extent differences between Germany and the U.S. have grown or diminished over the past three decades.

Tom Cusack joined the unit as a new member and senior research fellow in 2009. His main project deals with the way in which developments in the labour market as well as changing distributions of income affect the level of popular support and demand for redistributive policies on the part of government. The research focuses on developments in Britain over the last quarter century and contrasts these with the German and American experience.