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The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the beginning of one of the most interesting natural experiments in recent history. The East German transition from a Communist state to part of the Federal Republic of Germany abruptly created a new social order as old institutions were abolished and new counterparts imported. This unique situation provides an exceptional opportunity to examine the central tenets of life-course sociology. The empirical chapters of this book draw a comprehensive picture of life-course transformation, demonstrating how the combination of life-course dynamics coupled with an extraordinary pace of system change affect individual lives. How much turbulence was created by the transition and how much stability was preserved? How did the qualifications and resources acquired before 1989 influence the fortunes in the restructured economy? How did the privatization and reorganization of firms impact individuals? Did the transformation experiences differ by age/cohort and gender? How stable were social networks at work and in the family? Were personality characteristics important mediators of post-1989 success or failure, or were they rather changed by them? How specific were the East German life trajectories in comparison with those of Poland and West Germany?

The welfare state is a trademark of the European social model. An extensive set of social and institutional actors provides protection against common risks, offering economic support in periods of hardship and ensuring access to care and services. Welfare policies define a set of social rights and address common vulnerabilities to protect citizens from market uncertainties. But over recent decades, European welfare states have undergone profound restructuring and recalibration. This book analyzes people's attitudes toward welfare policies across Europe, and offers a novel comparison with the United States. Occupied with normative orientations toward the redistribution of resources and public policies aimed at ameliorating adverse conditions, the book focuses on the interplay between individual welfare attitudes and behavior, institutional contexts, and structural variables. It provides essential input into the comparative study of welfare state attitudes and offers critical insights into the public legitimacy of welfare state reform.

In many countries, concern about socio-economic inequalities in educational attainment has focused on inequalities in test scores and grades. The presumption has been that the best way to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes is to reduce inequalities in performance, but is this presumption correct? This book offers a comprehensive cross-national examination of the roles of performance and choice in generating inequalities in educational attainment. It combines in-depth studies by country specialists, with chapters discussing general empirical, methodological, and theoretical aspects of educational inequality. The aim is to investigate the extent to which inequalities in educational attainment can be attributed to differences in academic performance between socio-economic groups, and how far they can be attributed to differences in the choices made by students from these groups. The contributors focus predominantly on inequalities related to parental class and parental education.

This book explores why industrial societies vary in the pace at which they reduce gender inequality and compares changes in women's employment opportunities in Japan and Taiwan over the last half-century. Japan has undergone much less improvement in women's economic status than Taiwan, despite its more advanced economy and greater welfare provisions. The difference is particularly puzzling because the two countries share many institutional practices and values. Drawing on historical trends, survey statistics, and personal interviews with people in both countries, the author shows how country-specific organizational arrangements and industrial policies affect women's employment. In particular, the conditions faced by Japanese and Taiwanese women in the workplace have a profound effect on their labor force participation at critical points in their lives. Women's lifetime employment decisions in turn shape the divergent trajectories in gender equality. Few studies documenting the development of women's economic lives are based on non-Western societies and even fewer adopt a comparative perspective. This perceptive work demonstrates and underscores the importance of understanding gender inequality as a long-term, dynamic social process.

This book provides the first systematic comparative cross-national study of school disciplinary climates. In it, leading international social science researchers explore nine national case studies to identify the institutional determinants of variation in school discipline, the possible links between school environments and student achievement, and the implications of these findings for understanding social inequality. As the book demonstrates, a better understanding of school discipline is essential to the formation of effective educational policies. Ultimately, to improve a school's ability to contribute to youth socialization and student internalization of positive social norms and values, any changes in school discipline must not only be responsive to behavior problems but should also work to enhance the legitimacy and moral authority of school actors.

This book presents original empirical research on economic inequality in affluent countries, using comparable data from two widely-recognized, high quality, data sources: the Luxembourg Income Study Database and the Luxembourg Wealth Study Database. Both of these publicly-accessible databases are housed at LIS, a cross-national data archive that is directed by the book's two Editors. The volume's seventeen empirical chapters explore change over time in income inequality; the ways in which politics affects and is affected by economic inequality; the extent to which women's work, paid and unpaid, affects inequality; and cross-national comparisons of the distribution of various measures of household wealth. This book is exceptional in its inclusion of patterns of work within households, and politics, as sources of inequality. A key strength of the book is its emphasis on the economic position of the middle class; most studies of inequality include a secondary focus on either poverty or top incomes, leaving aside careful assessments of the middle of the income distribution. In addition to its thirteen comparative chapters, the book closes with a section that assesses inequality in four selected cases - Japan, Iceland, India, and South Africa. These countries, each with a unique pattern of inequality, have rarely appeared in cross-national texts on economic inequality, largely due to the lack of comparable data.

After the breakdown of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, the role of education systems in preparing students for the “real world” changed. Though young people were freed from coercive state institutions, the shift to capitalism made the transition from school to work much more precarious and increased inequality in early career outcomes. This volume provides the first large-scale analysis of the impact social transformation has had on young people in their transition from school to work in Central and Eastern European countries. Written by local experts, the book examines the process for those entering the workforce under socialism, during the turbulent transformation years, in the early 2000s, and today. It considers both the risks and opportunities that have emerged, and reveals how they are distributed across social groups. Only by studying these changes can we better understand the long-term impact of socialism and post-socialist transformation on the problems young people in this part of the world are facing today.

A comparative analysis of the political attitudes, values, aspirations, and identities of citizens in advanced industrial societies, this book focuses on the different ways in which social policies and national politics affect personal opinions on justice, political responsibility, and the overall trustworthiness of politicians. How have socio-political orientations changed in recent years? How do national institutions impact people's attitudes and values? Is there a correlation between orientations and changing social stratification patterns? How are attitudes translated into action under different institutional arrangements? What impact do new supranational institutions have on the orientations of mass publics? Drawing on the extensive databases created over the last decade stemming from the International Social Survey Program and the European Social Survey, the book contributes to the growing literature of theoretically informed comparative work.