Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Although sociologists pay increasing attention to wealth, we know very little about the relationship between children and wealth accumulation. Using the information on wealth from panel surveys (the Swiss Household Panel, the Household of Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia and the German Socio-Economic Panel), we study families’ wealth accumulation in different social and political settings. This contribution tests how children affect the propensity to save and net worth. It also addresses anticipation effects when individuals plan to have a child. The results from fixed effects models show that dependent children reduce the probability to save, whereas planning for a child increases the probability to save. To test whether lower or higher expenditure is responsible for lower saving probability, we estimate models with earned income and labour supply as mediator variables. Small children are found to reduce saving mostly through income losses, and older children reduce saving through higher expenditures. In the long run, children have moderate negative consequences on wealth accumulation in all countries (6714 CHF per grown-up child in Switzerland, 15,462 AU$ in Australia, and 619 EUR in Germany).

Property wealth represents the most important wealth component in nearly all OECD countries. Homeownership is linked to wealth accumulation in several ways: Wealthier households are more likely to buy a house or apartment, home owners tend to save more and rising house values typically yield higher returns than money in a bank account. Moreover, owners can borrow on a mortgage to finance, e.g., the formation of an enterprise or other economic activities. At the aggregate level, these relations can explain why countries with low rates of homeownership tend to have a high wealth inequality.

This paper looks at wealth and homeownership in Germany and Switzerland. These countries show the lowest proportion of owner-occupiers in Europe and a high wealth inequality. We analyse to what extent this high inequality can be explained by homeownership status. In the first part of this contribution, we review explanations for the low share of owner-occupiers in the two countries. In the second part, we analyse wealth and homeownership empirically using data of the SHP and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from 2012. We make use of decomposition methods to analyse how renter and owner households differ in wealth levels and wealth inequality.

In this chapter we examine individual-level shifts in attitudes toward immigrants, government spending and the environment over sixteen years in Switzerland. We approach this inquiry with an eye toward the role of political parties in shaping people’s views on politically salient topics. We identify a great deal of year-to-year change in people’s views on these three issues, though they have stabilized significantly in recent years. We also find that individuals’ partisan leanings shape their stances on key issues over time and that this effect is strongest for young people’s views on immigration. This chapter contributes to our understanding of change and stability in Swiss politics and also adds to what we know about attitude development among democratic citizens.

Since just over half of the Swiss voters decided not to join the European Economic Area in 1992, public opinion on the European Union (EU) has consistently become more critical in Switzerland. While macro factors such as the 2008 economic crisis undoubtedly played a role, examining changes within individuals sheds light on why Swiss citizens changed their mind at some point in their life course. Based on previous literature, we predict that both economic and political factors play a role in shaping Swiss citizens’ (un)willingness to join the EU. In contrast to most studies that compare attitudes between individuals, we go a step further and examine how changes within individuals affect changes in attitudes toward the EU. Our analyses of SHP data (1999–2014) show that, in line with previous studies, citizens with a higher social status (e.g., higher education) are more likely to support joining the EU while those holding right-wing values are less likely to do so. When analysing changes within individuals however, we find that above all, changes in political attitudes (e.g., increasingly right-wing, less interest in politics) result in less support for Switzerland joining the EU.

Welfare states provide individuals with an insurance against a variety of risks. Therefore, how much an individual is exposed to these risks is expected to influence their support for social spending. In this chapter, we focus on the evolution of perceived unemployment risk and its relationship with attitudes towards social policy in Switzerland over the 1999–2014 period. Aggregate analyses of data from the Swiss Household Panel reveal a slight increase in the share of Swiss residents who feel insecure. However, this trend coincides with a decrease in aggregate support for social spending, whereas the share of respondents supporting higher taxation for the rich has seen a marginal increase. At the individual-level, we do find some evidence for a link between objective unemployment risk, the perception of this risk, and support for unemployment benefits. But the relation between objective risk and policy preferences is mainly explained by structural factors such as education and income rather than the perception of risk. These findings can help explain the relative stability of public opinion despite changes in economic conditions.

In this chapter, we ask whether political and civic commitment changes a person’s worldviews. Over a timeframe of eleven years (1999–2009), we consider worldviews of individuals who either become members of an environmental protection organization, a charitable organization, or a union. We show that commitment differs in relation to different groups of joiners: the majority joins an organization with worldviews similar to those who have already committed. Thus, the worldviews of this group are hardly affected by commitment. Other members, however, engage in joint action with worldviews that differ from those already committed. This group synchronizes their worldviews over time with the community they commit to. In addition, changes are durable. Commitment hence affects worldviews of new members in different ways and consequently, longitudinal analysis of subgroups is a fruitful enterprise for scholars interested in the life course effects of commitment.