SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

Perceptions of Inequalities and Justice in Europe (PIJE)

Over recent decades, European societies have witnessed increasing social inequalities. Faced with more flexible labor markets, open trade, and technological as well as ongoing demographic changes, European welfare models have been unable to effectively address this issue. Recent developments such as the yellow vest movement in France and the rise of populist parties across Europe have renewed...

Wealth-Holders at the Top (WATT): An Interdisciplinary Research Network

How much do Germany’s top wealth holders own in assets? What are their socio-demographic and psychological characteristics? How do the rich get rich in the first place? And how involved are they in civic and political activities? The project Wealth-Holders at the Top (WATT) seeks to answer these key questions. The aim is to understand the extent, causes, and consequences of economic inequalities....

De-routinization of Jobs and Polarization of Earnings: Evidence from 35 Countries

The job polarization hypothesis suggests a U-shaped pattern of employment growth along the earnings/skill distribution, which is driven by simultaneous growth in the employment of high-skill/high-earnings and low-skill/low-earnings occupations due to Routine-Biased Technological Change (RBTC) [Acemoglu and Autor, 2011]. An aspect of both high social and political relevance is the implications of job ...

Household Income and Wealth among People with a Migration Background: A Comparison of Switzerland and Germany

The German Minimum Wage and Wage Growth: Heterogeneous Treatment Effects Using Causal Forests

Previous research suggests that minimum wages induce heterogeneous treatment effects on wages across different groups of employees. This research usually defines groups \textit{ex ante}. We analyze to what extent effect heterogeneities can be discerned in a data-driven manner by adapting the generalized random forest implementation of Athey et al (2019) in a difference-in-differences setting. Such ...

The Distribution of Wealth in Germany 1895-2018

This paper presents the first comprehensive study of the long-run evolution of wealth inequality in Germany. We combine tax data, surveys, national accounts and rich lists to study the distribution of wealth in Germany from 1895 to 2018. We show that the concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 1% has fallen by half, from close to 50% in 1895 to less than 25% today. The interwar period as well ...

The Role of Rental Income, Real Estate and Rents for Inequality in Germany

We quantify the contribution of rental income to pre- and post-government equivalent household income inequality and of housing wealth to net wealth inequality between 2002 and 2017 in Germany by means of a factor decomposition. Further, we differentiate by region types (urban vs. rural, large vs. small municipalities) and federal states. We find that housing wealth, housing ownership and rental income ...

Studying Regional Development Dynamics and their Political Consequences: SOEP RegioHub at Bielefeld University

Leibniz ScienceCampus SOEP-RegioHub at Bielefeld University (SOEP@UBi) Living conditions in Germany today show evidence of increasing and rapidly changing regional disparities in structural, demographic and economic domains. These disparities often take the form of an adverse access to health care facilities, childcare provision, education and other public services as well as regional labour...

Effects of the legal minimum wage on poverty

The project analyses the effects of the statutory minimum wage on poverty in Germany. We use the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to examine the development of income poverty. Using a microsimulation model, the project studies the effect of minimum wages on social benefits.

The Economic Research Potentials of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study

We provide a concise introduction to a household-panel data infrastructure that provides the international research community with longitudinal data of private households in Germany since 1984: the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We demonstrate the comparative strength of the SOEP data in answering economically-relevant questions by highlighting its diverse and impactful applications throughout ...