The Influence of the Class Situations of Husbands and Wives on Class Identity, Party Preference and Attitudes Towards Redistribution: Sweden, Germany and the United States

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Abstract
The influences of female employment on working couples' class-based identities, preferences towards government redistribution, and choice of political party in Sweden, Germany, and the US are analysed in this article. Two issues are of interest. The first is the unit of class composition: families (conventional approach) versus individuals (individual approach). The results indicate that the conventional approach explains more of the variation in the dependent variables than does the individual approach. However, in many cases the inclusion of female employment within the class schema increases the explanatory power of social class significantly. The second issue is cross-country variation. Based on assumptions about the post-industrial economy, a hypothesis concerning cross-country variation in class-gender patterns is tested. In contrast to the hypothesis, the data show that female employment influences are greatest in Germany, closely followed by Sweden. In the US, influences of female employment on working couples' socio-political orientations are negligible.