Social Assistance Careers between Life-Course Policy and Social Change

Team: Prof. Dr. Stephan Leibfried, Benjamin W. Veghte, PD., Dipl.-Soz. Christine Hagen, Dipl.-Soz. Heike Niemann, Dipl.-Soz.-Päd. Uwe Schwarze

The project has contributed to the introduction of a new approach to poverty research in Germany: the dynamic or the life-course oriented approach. The results paint a more differentiated picture of poverty than do conventional studies, but without lending themselves to classification in predominant right-left categories. All in all, there are some indications for what the German sociologist Ulrich Beck calls "individualisation of social inequality": Poverty is less often a static than a transitory state (temporalisation); it is subjectively interpreted to accord with individuals' own biographical narratives (biographisation) and spreads beyond traditional margi-nalised groups (delimitisation). Ideas of strong borderlines within society are proven by these results to be obsolete.

The project uses a unique database, the Bremen 10%-Longitudinal-Sample of social assistance files. The results concerning the duration of social assistance receipt collected for persons claiming social assistance (Hilfe zum Lebensunterhalt) in 1983 for the first time and who were observed until 1989. These results were later validated by the analysis of a younger entry cohort (first-time claimants of the year 1989, being observed through 1994). Social assistance receipt did not last longer at the beginning of the 90s than it did at the beginning of the 80s. Moreover, different coping strategies with respect to the need for social assistance were found on the basis of 90 focused interviews with first-time claimants from the 1983 and 1984 cohorts . In addition to these retrospective interviews, 72 interviews with the first-time claimants in 1995 were conducted at the time of their first claim. These interviews were the first wave of a qualitative panel.

In the final phase (2000-2001), the pro-ject focuses less than heretofore on social assistance clients themselves and more on institutions. In an international comparison (Germany, Sweden, and the USA), the project examines local social assistance administrations and their polices in relation to the life-course (the expert interviews in Germany and Sweden as well as the comparative institutional-theoretical analyses were largely completed by the end of the previous research phase). These policies are undergoing change in the context of an internationally discernible restructuring of the local social welfare system. The qualitative investigations (qualitative panel) now focus on the relationship between social assistance clients and the institutions of the local social welfare system and the latter's (gender-specific) 'life-course policies' as well as on the life situations and coping strategies of clients after they have exited social assistance. A concluding volume on the institution-related findings of Phases IV and V is planned for 2001: "The Activating Welfare State: New Strategies for Fighting Poverty in Europe and the United States".