SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

Urban Inequalities and Diversities in Germany

Germany has emerged over centuries as a central European country marked by political shifts that have resulted in deep regional fragmentation. The polit ical burdens of two world wars led, in the late 1940s, to a separation of the country into the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), a separation that ended with German (re)unification in ...

Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land

The Long Way to Gender Equality: Gender Pay Differences in Germany, 1871-2021: halshs-04424048

This paper provides the _rst time series of the gender earnings ratio for the full-time employed workforce in Germany since the 1870s and compares Ger- many's path with the Swedish and U.S. cases. The industrialization period yielded slow advances in economic gender relations due to women's delayed inclusion in the industrial workforce. The _rst half of the 20th century exhib- ited a marked leap. In ...

‚Queering‘ Social Class: Zum Zusammenhang von sexueller Orientierung, Geschlechtsidentität und sozialer Herkunft

LSBT*-Personen unterscheiden sich häufig in gelebten Familien- und Partnerschaftskonzepten von der heteronormativen Idealvorstellung und weisen womöglich deshalb bedeutsame Differenzen in Bildungsabschlüssen, Löhnen und beruflichen Status verglichen zur heterosexuellen Cisbevölkerung auf. Mithilfe der gezielten Aufstockungsstichprobe von LSBT*-Personen des SOEP und der Onlinebefragung LGBielefeld analysiert ...

How Many Brackets Should We Ask for to Derive Adequate Metric Information for Income and Wealth?

This paper investigates how the number of brackets and the choice of upper cutoffs in grouped data affect the metric approximation of income and wealth. The literature currently lacks a definition of what should be considered too few brackets or too-low cut-offs. Using German survey data, we show that more than six (eight) brackets and an upper cut-off at the 95th (97th) percentile are sufficient to ...

Wealth and Its Distribution in Germany, 1895-2021

German history over the past 125 years has been turbulent. Marked by two world wars, revolutions and major regime changes, as well as a hyperinflation and three currency reforms, expropriations and territorial divisions, it comprises extreme shocks to study the role of historical events, taxation, asset price changes, portfolio heterogeneity in affecting the wealth distribution in the long run. Combining ...

Wealth Creators or Inheritors? Unpacking the Gender Wealth Gap from Bottom to Top and Young to Old

There is growing interest in understanding how gender influences the accumulation of wealth. While prior studies focused on labor-related determinants, our research focuses on inheritances and gifts. Using unique survey data that oversamples the top 1% of wealth holders in Germany, we show that the gender wealth gap is small for individuals up to age 40, then widens, and declines for those past retirement ...

Consequences of Forced Labor Conscription: Evidence from Dutch Civilians after WWII

Disruptions of labor market trajectories have lasting effects on later economic success. Displacement due to forced labor conscription is a disruption that remains understudied despite its continued prevalence in contemporary contexts. I investigate the consequences of exposure to forced labor conscription for individuals' long-term labor market outcomes. I exploit the fact that cohorts of Dutch...

Parent-Child Mismatches in Educational Aspirations: Prevalence, Stability, and Convergence over Time

Parent-child mismatches in educational aspirations may negatively affect child development. We examine (1) the prevalence of mismatching aspirations across school grades 3–9 (ages 8–15), (2) their stability over time, and (3) whether mismatching aspirations converge to parents’ or to children’s aspirations. We use data from two German National Educational Panel Study cohorts (“kindergarten”: N=4,217, ...

Change in Personal Culture over the Life Course

Prior literature finds stability in personal culture, such as attitudes and values, in individuals’ life courses using short-running panel data. This work has concluded that lasting change in personal culture is rare after formative early years. This conclusion conflicts with a growing body of evidence for changes in personal culture after significant life course transitions, drawing on long-running ...