While most students in Germany who obtain a university entrance qualification enroll in higher education, the decision to do so still depends on their socio-economic background. This difference remains even when grades, cognitive skills and other observable factors are considered. In Germany, eligible school-leavers whose parents hold a university degree are 20 percentage points more likely to...
Der Übergang in ein Studium ist nach wie vor vom sozioökonomischen Hintergrund der Schülerinnen und Schüler abhängig, auch wenn deren Fähigkeiten und andere beobachtbare Faktoren berücksichtigt werden. In Deutschland beträgt der Unterschied zwischen der Wahrscheinlichkeit ein Bachelorstudium zu beginnen bei Absolventen mit hohem und niedrigem sozioökonomischen Status 20 Prozentpunkte, d.h. solche...
The large numbers of refugees that arrived in Germany over the last few years, has raised the question about how migrants adjust to life in Germany and how easy it is for migrants to integrate into society. One important part of integration is financial integration or financial inclusion. In its simplest form this means both access and use of basic back accounts. In this project we study financial...
Motivations to participate in the labour market as well as to invest in labour market skills are crucial forthe successful integration of refugees. In this paper we use a unique dataset – the IAB-BAMF-SOEPRefugee Survey, which is a representative longitudinal study of all refugees reported on administrativerecords in Germany – and analyse which determinants and characteristics are correlated with highmotivation ...
This paper investigates two mechanisms through which education may affect cognitive skills in adolescence, exploiting a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment to identify causal effects: between 2001 and 2007, years at academic-track high school were reduced by one, leaving the overall curriculum unchanged. First, I exploit the variation over time and ...
This dissertation consists of three self-contained research articles, each making an independent contribution to the higher education literature.
We examine intergenerational mobility differences between Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the US. Using ranks, we find that the US is substantially less intergenerationally mobile than the three European countries and that the most mobile region of the US is less mobile than the least mobile regions of Norway and Sweden. Using a linear estimator of income share mobility, we find that the four countries ...
