Forschung SOEP: Soziale Ungleichheiten und Verteilung

Unfair Pay and Health

This paper investigates physiological responses to perceptions of unfair pay. We use an integrated approach exploiting complementarities between controlled lab and representative field data. In a simple principal-agent experiment agents produce revenue by working on a tedious task. Principals decide how this revenue is allocated between themselves and their agents. Throughout the experiment we record ...

Positional Income Concerns: Prevalence and Relationship with Personality and Economic Preferences

This paper presents detailed evidence about who compares to whom in terms of relative income. We rely on representative survey data on the importance of income comparisons vis-a-vis seven reference groups, allowing us to exploit within-subject heterogeneity. We explore the prevalence and determinants of positional income concerns, investigating the role of personality and economic preferences. Our ...

Private Net Worth in Eastern and Western Germany Only Converging Slowly

Very nearly 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, households in eastern Germany have an average net worth of 67,400 euros which is less than half that of their counterparts in western Germany with an average net worth of 153,200 euros. In both parts of the country, real estate ownership is quantitatively the most important asset type. Although the share of owner-occupiers has increased significantly ...

Wages in Eastern Germany Still Considered More Unjust Than in the West

Almost twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, far more eastern Germans are unhappy with their income than western Germans. In 2013, around 44 percent of employed eastern Germans rated their earnings as unjust compared with approximately one-third in western Germany. Although the east-west gap has been diminishing since 2005—to around 12 percent in 2013—this is not because eastern Germans ...

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 ...

Anhaltend hohe Vermögensungleichheit in Deutschland

Nach aktuellen Analysen auf der Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) belief sich das Nettovermögen der privaten Haushalte in Deutschland im Jahr 2012 auf 6,3 Billionen Euro. Knapp 28 Prozent der erwachsenen Bevölkerung verfügten über kein oder sogar ein negatives Vermögen. Im Durchschnitt lag das individuelle Nettovermögen 2012 bei gut 83 000 Euro, es war damit nur wenig höher als zehn Jahre ...

Arbeitslose haben deutlich weniger Vermögen als vor zehn Jahren: Acht Fragen an Markus Grabka

Poor, Unemployed, and Politically Inactive?

People with low incomes 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 Study (SOEP) suggest that this inequality has followed an upward trend over the ...

The Poor and Unemployed Show Less Political Interest: Seven Questions to Martin Kroh

Reduction in Income Inequality Faltering

Inequality of disposable incomes in Germany has decreased slightly since its peak in 2005. However, this trend did not continue in 2011. The most important reasons for this were the inequality in market incomes, including capital incomes, which had increased again. Besides this finding, the updated analyses of personal income distribution based on the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) show that the ...