SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

Wage Dispersion and Life-Cycle Unemployment

Higher wage dispersion may induce unemployed workers to search longer for a job by increasing their reservation wages. This paper investigates the implications of this mechanism in a job search model featuring a finite work life, showing that a mean-preserving spread of the wage offer distribution could lead to a larger increase in reservation wages of younger than older workers because the...

Special SOEP-Seminar

This paper evaluates the effects of the newly introduced German minimum wage on the distribution of hourly wages and hours worked. The study is based on the German Structure of Earnings Survey (GSES), the only large scale data set for Germany that includes information on hourly wages and hours worked. We provide a full distributional analysis based on counterfactual distributions that would have...

Health Policy and Access to Health Care in Germany: A Fragmented System for Asylum Seekers’ Health

In Germany, health needs of citizens and ordinary residents are taken care of under the scope of statutory social and health insurance. The asylum-seeking population, however, receives healthcare through a parallel system, where decisions on provision of health services are not met at a central health governance level, but rather at federal state and sometimes at municipal...

Nearly 1.1 Million People in Germany Use Food Banks, Single and Separated Parents in Particular at an Above-Average Frequency

Food banks are returning to the spotlight as their use increases due to the coronavirus pandemic and the influx of Ukrainian refugees to Germany. The current discussion is focused on whether the food banks can handle the increasing number of users as well as the financial and organizational challenges that come with them. Until now, however, no robust, empirical data on food bank use has been available. ...

Income and Wealth Inequality in Hong Kong, 1981–2020: The Rise of Pluto-Communism?

The objective of this paper is to better understand the evolution and institutional roots of Hong Kong's growing economic inequality and political cleavages. By combining multiple sources of data (household surveys, fiscal data, wealth rankings, national accounts) and methodological innovations, two main findings are obtained. First, he evidence suggests a very large rise in income and wealth inequality ...

Charitable Giving and Income: Households with High Income Donate Less than Poorer Households Relative to Their Disposable Income

For the first time in 2020, the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), an annual survey of private households, surveyed the donation behavior of a random sample of high net worth individuals that had been added in 2019. As a result of this sample, the volume of private donations increased from 9.7 to 10.3 billion euros in 2019, despite the fact that fewer individuals donated and the donation rate was lower (46.8 ...

Europe’s biggest Basic Income pilot project. The Catalan case.

After the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, Catalonia is set to be the place of the most ambitious Universal Basic Income (UBI) pilot experiment in Europe to date. Up to 5,000 participants will be selected to receive for two years (2023-2024) an individual cash benefit of 800 EUR (300 EUR for minors), unconditionally. The Catalan pilot project will also test the...

Perceptions of Inequalities and Justice in Europe (PIJE) Summer Workshop

This two-day workshop aims to bring together again researchers of all project partners (SOEP/DIW Berlin, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität Hamburg, Universität Konstanz, Universität Wien, Radboud University, New York University, MPI für Sozialrecht und Sozialpolitik, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) for presentation and discussion of work packages and research...

Disparities in Labour Market and IncomeTrends during the First Year of the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from Germany

Pandemic Depression: COVID-19 and the Mental Health of the Self-Employed

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these ...