-
The German government is planning to reform Hartz IV by replacing it with a simpler and more accessible system known as Bürgergeld. Using a random-based survey of eight job centers in North Rhine-Westphalia, this Weekly Report considers the perspectives of the long-term unemployed: What do they think about the reforms? How do they perceive their situation? What are their daily lives like? The findings ...
In:
DIW Weekly Report
29/30/31/2022 (2022), 183-192
| Fabian Beckmann, Rolf G. Heinze, Jürgen Schupp
-
The availability of social media data is growing and represents a new data source for economic research. This paper presents a detailed study on the use of data from a career-oriented social networking platform for measuring employee flows and employer networks. The employment data are exported from user profiles and linked to the Mannheim Enterprise Panel (MUP). The linked employer-employee (LEE) ...
Mannheim:
Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW),
2023,
(ZEW Discussion Paper No. 23-041)
| Patrick Breithaupt, Hanna Hottenrott, Christian Rammer, Konstatin Römer
-
This study investigates the impact of child-related absence from work on the income of working mothers and fathers, addressing a significant research gap in sociology and labour economics. While previous research has established that gender and parenthood significantly influence income levels, the consequences of caring for a sick child-a common and unpredictable responsibility-remain inadequately ...
Berlin:
DIW Berlin; SOEP,
2025,
(SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 1219)
| Ayhan Adams, Katrin Golsch
-
How do students’ earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and non-FiF students. Our data can explain two-thirds of this gap, with the largest share attributable to field of study choice. We show that ...
Berlin:
DIW Berlin; SOEP,
2025,
(SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 1221)
| Katharina Adler, Fabian Kosse, Markus Nagler, Johannes Rincke
-
This paper investigates whether individuals’ relative (status or positional) concerns are associated with their transitions from paid employment or inactivity to self-employment. The conjecture is that stress and anxiety arising from socio-economic comparisons may be motivating factors for individuals to establish their own businesses. We examine this using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) dataset, ...
In:
Small Business Economics
(online first) (2025),
| Alpaslan Akay, Levent Yilmaz
-
Overeducated workers are more productive and have higher wages in comparison to their adequately educated coworkers in the same jobs. However, they have lower wages than their similarly educated peers who are in correctly matched jobs. This study examines the hypotheses that overeducated workers sort into performance pay jobs as an adjustment mechanism and that performance pay enhances their wages. ...
In:
Education Economics
(online first) (2025), 1–21
| Mehrzad B. Baktash
-
Transitioning into young adulthood often brings about significant changes in personality traits. However, the reasons behind these personality changes remain unclear. This study integrates insights from research on personality development and the psychology of social class to study how the construction of one’s social class identity in young adulthood might trigger changes in personality traits (i.e., ...
In:
Social Psychological and Personality Science
(online first) (2025),
| Anatolia Batruch, Manon A. van Scheppingen
-
Von Sozialarbeiterinnen und Sozialarbeitern wird eine „armutsbewusste Haltung“ gefordert und ein mögliches „sozialpolitisches Mandat“ wird diskutiert. Unerforscht bleibt bislang, inwiefern Sozialarbeiterinnen und Sozialarbeiter eine staatliche Umverteilung und eine staatliche Armutsbekämpfung befürworten. Als bislang erste Studie vergleicht dieser Beitrag die Einstellungen der Berufsgruppe mit anderen ...
In:
Sozial Extra
49 (2025), 2, 147-153
| Jürgen Bauknecht, Jan A. Velimsky
-
Earnings are often top-coded (right-censored) in administrative registers. The censoring threshold in the case of Germany is the limit value for social security contributions, leading to a substantial fraction of censoring: For example, about 1 % of male workers in West Germany are affected, rising to above 30 % for highly educated prime-aged workers. This missing right tail of the earnings distribution ...
In:
Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik
(online first) (2025),
| Mattis Beckmannshagen, Johannes König, Isabella Retter, Christian Schluter, Carsten Schröder, Yogam Tchokni
-
The energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the heightened vulnerability of low-income households to rising heating costs, particularly those in energy inefficient buildings. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this study examines the distributional impact of heating costs across income deciles and evaluates the effectiveness of policy interventions. We find ...
Berlin:
DIW Berlin,
2025,
(DIW Discussion Papers No. 2119)
| Sophie M. Behr, Merve Kucuk, Maximilian Longmuir, Karsten Neuhoff