SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

Unconditional Basic Income: from theory to practice

This paper aims to investigate whether Van Parijs' theory of Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) can address the criticism of the lack of individual responsibility on the part of recipients. To do so, I relate this UBI theory to the results of field experiments that study the impact of UBI on employment. Theoretical and empirical results suggest that the UBI does not lead to a decrease in labor...

Generational Wealth Inequality Across the Distribution: Trends in the U.S. since 1949

Using recently published U.S. long-run microdata (SCF+), we document that — for people born in the first half of the 20th century — median wealth used to increase from one ten-year birth cohort to another. For people born in the second half, median wealth successively declined from cohort to cohort and wealth inequality within birth cohorts has markedly increased. Shifts in...

Wage Dispersion and Life-Cycle Unemployment

Higher wage dispersion may induce unemployed workers to search longer for a job by increasing their reservation wages. This paper investigates the implications of this mechanism in a job search model featuring a finite work life, showing that a mean-preserving spread of the wage offer distribution could lead to a larger increase in reservation wages of younger than older workers because the...

Special SOEP-Seminar

This paper evaluates the effects of the newly introduced German minimum wage on the distribution of hourly wages and hours worked. The study is based on the German Structure of Earnings Survey (GSES), the only large scale data set for Germany that includes information on hourly wages and hours worked. We provide a full distributional analysis based on counterfactual distributions that would have...

Pension Wealth and the Gender Wealth Gap

We examine the gender wealth gap with a focus on pension wealth and statutory pension rights. By taking into account employment characteristics of women and men, we are able to identify the extent to which the redistributive effect of pension rights reduces the gender wealth gap. The data for our analysis come from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), one of the few surveys that collects information ...

Changes in Working Hours Are Driving Earnings Inequality

According to Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data, inequality in gross monthly earnings in Germany increased significantly between 1993 and 2003 and has been stagnating at a high level since 2008. As this Weekly Report shows, the increase is not being driven by higher hourly wage inequality, but rather by working hours: In recent years, employees with a high hourly wage work more than previously compared ...

From Hartz IV to Bürgergeld: Reform Preferences of the Long-Term Unemployed

The German government is planning to reform Hartz IV by replacing it with a simpler and more accessible system known as Bürgergeld. Using a random-based survey of eight job centers in North Rhine-Westphalia, this Weekly Report considers the perspectives of the long-term unemployed: What do they think about the reforms? How do they perceive their situation? What are their daily lives like? The findings ...

Europe’s biggest Basic Income pilot project. The Catalan case.

After the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, Catalonia is set to be the place of the most ambitious Universal Basic Income (UBI) pilot experiment in Europe to date. Up to 5,000 participants will be selected to receive for two years (2023-2024) an individual cash benefit of 800 EUR (300 EUR for minors), unconditionally. The Catalan pilot project will also test the...

Perceptions of Inequalities and Justice in Europe (PIJE) Summer Workshop

This two-day workshop aims to bring together again researchers of all project partners (SOEP/DIW Berlin, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität Hamburg, Universität Konstanz, Universität Wien, Radboud University, New York University, MPI für Sozialrecht und Sozialpolitik, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) for presentation and discussion of work packages and research...

Disparities in Labour Market and IncomeTrends during the First Year of the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from Germany