SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

Expert Workshops Period 3

Income Inequality in Germany Stagnating over the Long Term, But Decreasing Slightly during the Coronavirus Pandemic

Both wages and needs-adjusted household income increased by ten percent between 2013 and 2018, benefiting all income groups. Wage inequality has been declining for many years and has now again reached the level of the early 2000s. At the same time, the low-wage sector shrank by two percentage points. Household income inequality, in contrast, has hardly changed for many years and the low-income rate ...

Cracking under Pressure? Gender Role Attitudes toward Maternal Employment in Times of a Pandemic

This paper studies the effects of Covid-19 related daycare and school closures on gender role attitudes toward maternal employment in Germany. We compare women and men with dependent children to those without children one year after the outbreak of the pandemic. Using data on gender role attitudes from 2008 through 2021, we find that fathers’ egalitarian attitudes toward maternal employment dropped ...

Time Spent on School-Related Activities at Home during the Pandemic: A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Group Inequality among Secondary School Students

Substantial educational inequalities have been documented in Germany for decades. In this article, we examine whether educational inequalities among children have increased or remained the same since the school closures of spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our perspective is longitudinal: We compare the amount of time children in secondary schools spent on school-related activities at home ...

Do You Really Want to Share Everything? The Wellbeing of Work-Linked Couples

Work as well as family life are crucial sources of human wellbeing, which however often interfere. This is especially so if partners work in the same occupation or industry. At the same time, being work-linked may benefit their career success. Still, surprisingly little is known about the wellbeing of work-linked couples. Our study fills this gap by examining the satisfaction differences between work-linked ...

How Often Have You Felt Disadvantaged? Explaining Perceived Discrimination

Im Rahmen einer Längsschnittanalyse des sozio-oekonomischen Panels gehen wir der Frage nach, wie sich Diskriminierungswahrnehmungen von Einwanderern und ihren Nachkommen im Laufe des Integrationsprozesses verändern. Insgesamt betrachtet fühlen sich Migrantinnen und Migranten, deren Integration weiter fortgeschritten ist, seltener aufgrund ihrer Herkunft benachteiligt. Allerdings zeigen gruppenspezifische ...

Wealth of Children from Single-Parent Families: Low Levels and High Inequality in Germany

Families’ economic wealth is a resource that can provide children with crucial advantages early in their lives. Prior research identified substantial variation of wealth levels between different family types with children from single-parent families being most disadvantaged. The causes of this disadvantage, how much the disadvantage varies between children and how the non-resident parents’ wealth may ...

Grading in Secondary Schools in Germany: The Impact of Social Origin and Gender

In the German school system, grades are the essential means of performance feedback and assignment. However, little research has been conducted on the factors that determine grades in addition to competencies, and existing findings are poorly replicated. Using data from the representative IQB Trends in Student Performance 2015 survey, our analysis combined a variety of personal and structural characteristics ...

Overcoming Barriers to Service Access: Refugees’ Professional Support Service Utilization and the Impact of Human and Social Capital

After arriving in a new country, refugees are most often dependent on professional support to reestablish their livelihood. It is however well documented that refugees face barriers when seeking access to services aimed at facilitating their settlement and integration. This study examines refugees’ support service needs and their actual utilization and investigates the impact of social and human capital ...

Prejudice in Disguise: Which Features Determine the Subtlety of Ethnically Prejudicial Statements?

In current immigration debates ethnic prejudice is often expressed in a subtle manner, which conceals its xenophobic content. However, previous research has only insufficiently examined the specific features that make certain ethnically prejudicial statements subtler, i.e., less readily identifiable as xenophobic, than others. The current study employs an experimental factorial survey design and assesses ...