Nicola Dickmann: - LIS

incomes in the United States in comparison to Germany should be due to better taxsubsidies for families.In addition, this study compares the development of child or family allowances andmaternity allowances with the LIS-data for the countries in question. The USA are notincluded as there are no such benefits available for all families. The comparison of thequotients of child, family and maternity allowances to net disposable income reveals noevidences for the theory, that the development of family benefits has been substantiallybetter in the Scandinavic and Northern American countries in comparison to Germanyand the United Kingdom.Table 3 hereExcept for the United Kingdom, all countries show a tendency towards granting morebenefits but to fewer people. The share of parents benefiting from government aid hasdecreased from 91 to 86 percent of all parents in Germany and from 87 to 57 in Canada,while it remained at roughly the same share in Sweden and Finland. From the familieswho received financial aid, in 1980 only 19 percent in Germany and 3 percent in Canadagot more than 10 percent of the total family income through aid. In 2000 42 percent offamilies in Germany and 23 percent in Canada received more than 10 percent of theirfamily income through family benefits. The same development can be observed inSweden and Finland. Only the family benefits in the United Kingdom developed in thecontrary direction: Substantially more families got aid in 2000 compared to 1980, but thefunding of family income was lower than twenty years ago. There is hence no evidencefor an explanation of the observed differences in family income through the developmentof benefits to families of the studied countries.6 Explanation of income differences via labour force participationof wivesMore promising than comparing the different patterns of cash benefits to families is alook at the personal income distribution of household members. According to the LIS9