WOMEN AND POVERTY DYNAMICS - THE CASE OF GERMANY AND BRITAIN

Using household panel data, this article analyses women's poverty in ( West) Germany and Britain comparatively, dynamically and with a gender -friendly perspective. It explores poverty dynamics, in terms of chara cteristics and duration of poverty spells; it underlines the interacti on between critical events and changes in resource distribution (famil y, labour market and welfare) in determining the gender characteristic s of poverty trajectories; and it verifies the different combination o f entry and exit events. The results show that women's greater vulnera bility to economic poverty lies in two different elements: on the one hand, women's poverty spells are longer, and on the other hand they ar e particularly exposed to economic fluctuations. Moreover, the differe nt demographic structures, labour market characteristics and welfare s ystems mean that there are substantial differences in the events causi ng the beginning or the end of poverty trajectories for women and men. From a comparison of the various regressions, it is clear that German women are more vulnerable to marital disruptions, while British femal e poverty spells are more strongly related to unemployment and women's burden of care and domestic work, which have a profound effect on the ir ability to take up paid employment outside the home. The facilitati on of women's integration/reintegration into the labour market (especi ally after family critical events such as divorce/separation) is an im portant event influencing the probability of leaving poverty in both s ettings.