Empirical research on distributive justice seeks to identify justice perceptions in a society which can be considered as patterns that legitimate inequalities. Therefore the analysis of distributive justice evaluations primarily focuses on the perceived justice of (labour) incomes.
So far empirical justice research using large scale survey data was restricted to a cross-sectional perspective. The recent wave of the GSOEP (2009) now provides the third query (after 2005 and 2007) concerning the justice evaluation of the own income. Hence it is now possible to investigate dynamic aspects of just incomes with a panel approach.