Economic consequences of family dissolution : comparing Germany and the United States since the 1980s and married and cohabiting parents in Germany Welfare states and policies have changed greatly over the past decades mostly characterized by retrenchments in terms of government spending or in terms of restricted access to certain benefits. In the area of family policies however a lot of countries have simultaneously expanded provisions and transfers for families. Bringing together the macro analysis of policy variation and household income changes on the micro level the main research question of the dissertation is to what extent economic consequences following separation and divorce in families with children have changed between the 1980s and the 2000s in Germany and the United States. The second research question of the dissertation regards the differences in dissolution outcomes between married and cohabiting parents in Germany. The dissertation thus aims to link institutional regulations of welfare states with the actual income situation of families. To achieve this a research design was developed that has never been used for the analysis of the economic consequences o…