Income inequality has grown in many countries over the past decades. Single country studies have investigated how trends in family demography, such as rising female employment, assortative mating and single parenthood, have affected this development. But the combined effects have not been studied sufficiently, much less in a comparative perspective. We apply decomposition and counterfactual analyses to Luxembourg Income Study data from the 1990s and 2000s for West Germany and the USA. We counterfactually analyse how changes in the distribution of men’s and women’s education, employment and children across households between the 1990s and 2000s affected overall inequality (Theil index). We find that changes in family demography between the 1990s and the 2000s explain inequality growth in West Germany but not in the USA, where the effects of gendered changes in education and employment offset each other. In West Germany, changes in the distribution of household types, and particularly changes in men’s employment and education, contributed to increases in income inequality. The country differences in the relationship between changes in family demography and inequality growth reflect how the decline in men’s and the growth in women’s employment played out differently in the weakening male breadwinner context in West Germany and in the universal breadwinner context in the USA.

中文翻译：

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西德和美国的家庭人口和收入不平等

在过去的几十年中，许多国家的收入不平等加剧。单一国家研究调查了家庭人口学的趋势，例如女性就业率上升、混合性交配和单亲家庭，如何影响这种发展。但是，尚未对综合影响进行充分研究，更不用说从比较的角度进行研究了。我们将分解和反事实分析应用于 1990 年代和 2000 年代西德和美国的卢森堡收入研究数据。我们反事实地分析了 1990 年代和 2000 年代之间家庭中男女教育、就业和子女分布的变化如何影响整体不平等（泰尔指数）。我们发现 1990 年代和 2000 年代之间家庭人口结构的变化可以解释西德的不平等增长，但不能解释美国的不平等，教育和就业中性别变化的影响相互抵消。在西德，家庭类型分布的变化，特别是男性就业和教育的变化，加剧了收入不平等。家庭人口变化与不平等增长之间关系的国家差异反映了男性就业下降和女性就业增长在西德男性养家糊口的背景下和美国普遍的养家糊口背景下的不同表现。