Objective: The present study investigates, for the first time in a wealthy country of Central Europe, the prevalence of poly-victimization (exposure to multiple forms of victimization within the past year) in an adolescent population. It further examines associations between single victimization types (such as sexual or physical assaults) with emotional and social functioning when poly-victimization is controlled for. Method: Data from a large and near-representative national school survey in Switzerland (N ϭ 6,749, 52.2% male, M age ϭ 15.5 years) were examined using descriptive and multiple regression analysis. Results: When poly-victimization was controlled for, individual victimization types showed largely diminished association with emotional and social functioning measures. Particularly weak associations were found for physical and sexual victimizations. By contrast, emotional assaults (including emotional bullying by peers and emotional abuse by parents) and maltreatment by parents retained the strongest links with levels of functioning. This general pattern of results held even when chronic individual victimization types were considered. Conclusions: Many previous studies may have underestimated adolescents' capacities to cope with physical and sexual victimizations where these experiences happen in an otherwise functional environment. Meanwhile, concurrent exposure to multiple kinds of victimization serves as a strong indicator of declined emotional and social functioning. Taken together, the findings embolden practitioners in general to avoid the pitfalls of overspecialization and to promote holistic treatment approaches toward adolescent victims of violence. In the Swiss context, professionals working with vulnerable children and youth may feel encouraged to overcome the fragmentarization of services that currently characterizes the children and youth welfare system in this country.

This study estimates the prevalence of non-take-up of social assistance using administrative data from the Canton of Bern. Regional variation in non-take-up rates is then used to study the contextual effects of social norms with respect to welfare receipt legitimacy. Social norms are proxied with the degree of urbanity, language regions and communal voter shares of left- and right-wing parties. Multiple regression analysis, extended by several robustness checks, suggests that social norms do indeed have an impact on take-up behavior.

No abstract

a b s t r a c tIn many countries results of inequality trends are ambiguous, because different methodological approaches blur the picture or because reliable data are not available. In this paper we assess whether tax data are suitable for the analysis of inequality trends. We do so by comparing tax data measurement concepts concerning income definition, statistical units and population coverage to theoretical-ideal concepts. We use Swiss tax data as an example to obtain a sense of the general direction and magnitude of potential biases and advantages. We therefore estimate the impact of the methodological options for measuring inequality based on tax data by comparing aggregated tax statistics and micro tax data results to corresponding results taken from surveys. While there are clear advantages to using tax data, such as long-term availability and reliable population coverage in more recent years, there are also drawbacks that lead to an overestimation of inequality based on aggregated tax statistics and hinder comparability over time. In sum, tax data are a source that should be used with care, but nonetheless seem to be indispensable for the analysis of inequality. Finally our estimations raise doubts about whether surveys are able to adequately track changes in income distribution tails, due to the undercoverage of very poor and very rich households.

This paper shows the potential of administrative data to grant us a more complete picture of the redistributive effects of the visible (tax rates) and hidden (tax deductions) instruments of the fiscal welfare state. Based on administrative tax data from a large Swiss canton, we apply a gini-based redistributive effect decomposition to demonstrate how several taxes and deductions impact the post-tax income distribution. We show that tax deductions drastically reduce the redistributive effect of taxes because lump sum deductions in a progressive tax system lead to greater tax relief for higher income earners. Moreover, high income earners have additional options to claim deductions such as real-estate expenses or extra-mandatory payments to the pension scheme. Comparison over time furthermore shows that the role of deductions for real-estate expenses decreased. All in all, because deductions reduce the redistributive effect of taxes, they lead to higher post tax income inequality compared to a hypothetical system without deducations. The redistrubtive effect of the tax system should therefore be studied, not only with respect to tax rates, but also with respect to deductions.