SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

To Marry or Not to Marry: Essays on Partnership Formation and Economic Labor Market Behavior of Married and Cohabiting Couples ; Dissertation

Die Wahl der Partnerschaft (Ehe oder eheähnliche Gemeinschaft) spielte bis in die 1970er Jahre eine eher untergeordnete Rolle in der ökonomischen Forschung. Der Grund hierfür ist die simple Tatsache, dass die Ehe die einzige anerkannte Form einer Partnerschaft war. Das Konstrukt der eheähnlichen Gemeinschaft spielte bis dato eine untergeordnete Rolleund wurde höchstens als Vorstufe der Ehe betrachtet. ...

Longitudinal Wealth Data and Multiple Imputation: An Evaluation Study

Statistical Analysis in surveys is generally facing missing data. In longitudinal studies for some missing values there might be past or future data points available. The question arises how to successfully transform this advantage into improvedimputation strategies. In a simulation study the authors compare six combinations of cross‐sectional and longitudinal imputation strategies for German wealth ...

Intergenerational Downward Mobility in Educational Attainment and Occupational Careers in West Germany in the Twentieth Century

What happens in the occupational careers of men if the intergenerational continuity in status reproduction is disrupted by the failure to reproduce the parental level of educational attainment? We frame this failure as a risk for intergenerational status maintenance and ask whether such a risk induces extra effort by way of compensation. By studying eight birth cohorts born between 1919 and 1971 characterized ...

Significant Statistical Uncertainty over Share of High Net Worth Households

The analyses of wealth inequality based on survey data usually suffer from undercoverage of the upper percentiles of the very wealthy. Yet given this group’s substantial share of total net worth, it is of particular relevance. As no tax data are available in Germany, the largest fortunes can only be simulated using “rich lists.” For example, combining the Forbes list, with its approximately 50 German ...

Evaluating the Minimum Wage Introduction in Germany (EVA-MIN)

Innovative Knowledge Transfer and Evidence-Based EvaluationHow the new minimum wage legislation, which goes into effect on January 1, 2015, is an open question. It is thus all the more important that the effects of the new minimum wage should be evaluated scientifically, for which this project will provide an important database. Researchers from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) research...

Income and Wealth Inequality after the Financial Crisis: The Case of Germany

The topic of rising income inequality does not only gain in relevance since the two prominent reports by the OECD (Growing unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries, Paris 2008; Divided we stand—Why inequality keeps rising, Paris 2011) but rather since the financial crisis. So far there is only scarce empirical evidence–besides a rather broad literature dealing with the US–about the ...

Wealth Distribution within Couples

While most studies on wealth inequality focus on the inequality between households, this paper examines the distribution of wealth within couples. For this purpose, we make use of unique individual level micro data from the German socio-economic panel study. In married and cohabiting couples men's net worth, on average, is 33,000euros higher than women's. We look at five different sets of factors (demographics, ...

Soziale Ungleichheiten der mütterlichen und kindlichen Gesundheit: Die Geburt aus dem Blickwinkel der Soziologie ; Dissertation

Comparing Wealth: Data Quality of the HFCS

The Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) provides information about household wealth (real and financial assets as well as liabilities) from 15 Euro‐countries after the financial crisis of 2007/8. The survey will be the central dataset in this topic in the future. However, several aspects point to potential methodological constraints regarding crosscountry comparability. Therefore the aim ...

Poor, Unemployed, and Politically Inactive?

Low income earners and job seekers are less interested and active in politics than people above the at-risk-of-poverty threshold and the working population. Compared to other European democracies, Germany has slightly above-average levels of inequality of political participation. Data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study suggest that this inequality has followed an upward trend over the last ...