DIW Weekly Report

Traditional Attitudes Toward Gender Roles Are Increasing Among Young People in Some Countries

Attitudes toward the roles of women and men in society have become more egalitarian in Germany and most countries around the world since World War II. Recently, however, this process has slowed significantly, even reversing in some places. In most countries, the attitudes of the youngest ten age groups surveyed are hardly any more egalitarian than those of the ten age groups before them. In about a ...

Ganzes Heft

Parental Influence on Their Children’s Homeownership Remains High, but Declining

Homeownership is far less prevalent in Germany than in most other European countries. This Weekly Report examines the extent to which homeownership in Germany depends on the ownership status of parents and how the association has changed over time. Homeownership rates are significantly lower among younger birth cohorts than among older cohorts. At the same time, intergenerational mobility toward renting ...

Ganzes Heft

Germany’s Labor Market: Increasingly Service-Oriented and Highly Skilled

The German labor market has undergone profound changes over the last decades. For a long time, the debate on structural change focused on the shift from manufacturing industries to services. This Weekly Report highlights that labor market changes are attributable to three developments: In addition to structural change, i.e., sectoral shifts, key drivers are an occupational shift toward service-related ...

Ganzes Heft

Basic Pension Recipients Are More Likely to Be Employed than Other Pensioners

With the 2021 introduction of Germany’s basic pension, longterm insured persons with low incomes can receive a supplement to their statutory pension. In 2024, around 1.4 million recipients received an average pension increase of 100 euros as a result. Data from the German Pension Insurance show that women especially benefit from the basic pension supplement. At the same time, it is striking that people ...

Ganzes Heft

Productivity: East-West Gap Replaced by Urban-Rural Gap

In 1991, the average labor productivity of the then-new federal states (plus West Berlin) only reached nearly half of the total national productivity level. Since then, the average labor productivity of these states has climbed up to nearly 90 percent. However, the ranking of the individual states has barely changed: Hamburg and the southern German states are still at the top, while most eastern German ...

Fiscal Capacity of German Federal States: East-West Gap Narrows, but Rich-Poor Divide Grows

Even now, 35 years after German unification, the economic power and fiscal capacity of the eastern German federal states remain below average. In Germany’s system of fiscal federalism, this leads to substantial financial transfers, a fact that repeatedly triggers political debate. Thereby, the low tax revenue of the economically weak states is also a consequence of the tax system—and by no means a ...

Ganzes Heft

Narratives on the Distributional Impact of Climate Policy Can Fuel Populism

Populist parties use narratives about social injustice to portray climate policy as elite-driven and socially unjust. This study— based on a survey experiment with some 1,600 participants— examines how three common narratives about the costs associated with climate policy affect populist and climate-populist attitudes. The results show that the narrative highlighting the disproportionate burden on ...

Ganzes Heft

Refugees Want to Stay in Germany Long Term and Become German Citizens

Becoming a German citizen marks a key step in the integration process of immigrants. An analysis of data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) shows that more and more refugees from six main countries who came to Germany between 2013 and 2019 were already naturalized or had applied to naturalize. The share of immigrants who had already naturalized increased from 2.1 percent in 2021 to 7.5 percent in ...

Ganzes Heft

German Economy Poised for Upturn Thanks To Fiscal Package; Uncertainties in the Global Economy

The German economy is slowly emerging from its trough. After a bumpy start to the year, which was marked by tariff-related special effects, growth in 2025 remains subdued at 0.2 percent. However, the economy is gradually picking up speed from the current third quarter onwards. Over the next two years, this will translate into noticeable economic growth of 1.7 and 1.8 percent annually, respectively. ...

Ganzes Heft

Refugees Are Feeling Increasingly Unwelcome and Perceiving Discrimination in the Labor and Housing Markets

The sentiment among refugees in Germany has changed significantly: Using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data from 2016 to 2023, it can be seen that refugees have been feeling increasingly unwelcome since 2018, while their concerns about xenophobia have grown since 2019. In addition, cross-sectional data from 2022 refugees’ subjective experiences of discrimination in the workplace and when searching for ...

Ganzes Heft

Geopolitical Tensions Fuel Currency Competition but US Dollar and Euro Remain Hard to Displace

Geopolitical frictions and high levels of uncertainty in US policy are driving countries to reduce dependence on the US dollar and implement new policies to promote their own currencies for settling cross-border trade. This Weekly Report analyzes the reactions of firms to such measures, focusing on China’s efforts to promote the renminbi globally. Leveraging detailed French customs data, the findings ...