Main content

The unit’s research program focuses on the causes and consequences of poverty/inequality and social policy, and the relationships between poverty/inequality and social policy. The unit studies how poverty and inequality are shaped by work, labor markets, politics, policies, institutions, power relations, and collective actors. The unit also investigates the sources, politics and political economy of social policy.
In terms of inequality, the unit is interested in a host of inequalities and their intersections (e.g. class, gender, and race). Much of the unit’s research is comparative across affluent democracies, with substantial attention to Western Europe, the U.S. and developing countries. The unit utilizes a wide variety of quantitative approaches, and includes studies at the macro-level, individual-level, and multiple levels of analysis.

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David Ausserhofer
David Ausserhofer
Contact

Marion Obermaier | Stefanie Roth

fon ++49 30 254 91-301/-371
fax ++49 30 25491-360
mail buero.usp [at] wzb.eu

Reichpietschufer 50
D-10785 Berlin

Research fields

Welfare State and Social Inequality

The research unit "Inequality and Social Policy" was closed on June 30, 2017.

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Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press

New Publications

Liberalism and the Welfare State. Economists and Arguments for the Welfare State
Backhouse, Roger E./Bateman, Bradley W./Nishizawa, Tamotsu/Plehwe, Dieter (Eds.) (2017). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, VI, 250 pp.

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Routledge
Routledge

The Politics of Work-Family Policy Reforms in Germany and Italy
Agnes Blome (2017). London/New York: Routledge.

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Etui
Etui

Takeovers with or without Worker Voice. Workers' Rights under the EU Takeover Bids Directive.
ETUI Series Workers Rights in Company Law.
Cremers, Jan/Vitols, Sigurt (Eds.) (2016). Brussels: European Trade Union Institute, 251 pp.