Redistribution across individuals within the framework of a one-year period is an empirically intensely studied question. However, a substantial share of annual redistribution might turn out to serve individual insurance in a longer perspective, reducing the level of actual redistribution across individuals. In this paper, we investigate to what extent long-run redistribution diverges from annual redistribution in welfare states of different types. Exploiting panel data from the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) for Australia, Germany, South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we find that welfare states such as Germany that are assumed to engage in a high level of redistribution actually achieve relatively less redistribution between individuals in the long run than the United Kingdom or the United States. Regression results show that a higher share of elderly in a country is associated with more annual redistribution, but with less long-run redistribution between individuals. The results suggest that, in welfare states with aging populations, we might expect growing annual redistribution that, to a substantial extent, is in fact income smoothing for the elderly.

中文翻译：

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世界各地福利国家的再分配和保险*

在一年的框架内跨个体的再分配是一个经验丰富的研究问题。然而，从长远来看，年度再分配的很大一部分可能会为个人保险服务，从而降低个人之间的实际再分配水平。在本文中，我们调查了不同类型福利国家的长期再分配与年度再分配的差异程度。利用来自澳大利亚、德国、韩国、瑞士、英国和美国的跨国等效文件 (CNEF) 的面板数据，我们发现德国等福利国家被假定从事高水平的从长远来看，再分配实际上在个人之间实现的再分配比英国或美国要少。回归结果表明，一个国家的老年人比例越高，年度再分配越多，但个人之间的长期再分配越少。结果表明，在人口老龄化的福利国家中，我们可能会预期年度再分配的增加，这在很大程度上实际上是老年人的收入平滑。