SOEP Brown Bag Seminar

In this paper we document trends in inequality in earnings and disposable household income for men and women in Germany from 2001 to 2019. We find that males at the lower half of the earnings distribution have lower earnings in 2019 than in 2001. In contrast, female earnings have increased throughout the distribution. Households and the welfare state has cushioned much---but not all---of the income drop at the bottom of the distribution.
A reweighting analysis reveals that changes in working hours as well as in the composition of nationalities explain a substantial part of the drop in the 10th earnings and net income percentile for men. Moreover, changes in household structure have led to an increase in disposable incomes throughout the distribution.