ABSTRACT
The present study explores how two crucial life events – job loss and longterm exit from work or ‘retirement’ – affect the income situation of older workers ages 50 and above. One of my major goals is to understand how changing welfare state provisions in the us and Germany have cushioned (or failed to cushion) the financial consequences of these events. Like Goodin et al. (1999) in their seminal study on the Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, I seek to provide a clearer picture of ‘how real lives are really lived’ (p. 1) in the United States and Germany – and of how real lives have changed over time.
