SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

Ungleiche Bildungschancen: welche Rolle spielen Underachievement und Persönlichkeitsstruktur?

Gender Pay Gap Lower in Large Cities than in Rural Areas

For years, the difference between the gross hourly earnings of women and of men has remained constant for German white-collar employees at about 30 percent. It is obvious that regional factors play an important role in explaining this difference. In rural areas, the gender pay gap is especially pronounced (2006: 33 percent) while in metropolitan areas it is considerably lower than the average (2006: ...

The Shrinking German Middle Class: Signs of Long-Term Polarization in Disposable Income?

The proportion of middle income earners in Germany has shrunk significantly in recent years: from 62 percent of the total population in the year 2000 to only 54 percent in 2006. Correspondingly, the proportion of the population at the margins of the income distribution has increased as well, while the downward mobility among the middle class was more marked than the upward mobility in higher income ...

The East German Wage Structure after Transition

We extend the literature on transition economies' wage structures by investigating the returns to tenure and experience. This study applies recent panel data and estimation approaches that control for hitherto neglected biases. We compare the life cycle structure in East and West German wages for fulltime employed men in the private sector. The patterns in the returns to seniority are similar for the ...

The Working Poor in European Welfare States: Empirical Evidence from a Multilevel Perspective

The Gender Earnings Gap inside a Russian Firm: First Evidence from Personnel Data - 1997 to 2002 ; Updated Version

Using unique personnel data from one Russian firm for the years 1997 to 2002 we study the size, development and determinants of the gender earnings gap in an internal labor market during late transition. The gap is sizable but declines strongly over the entire period. Gender earnings differentials are largest for production workers who constitute the largest employee group in the firm. Various decompositions ...

Bringing Home the Money: Xenophobia and Remittances: The Case of Germany

The determinants of migrants' remittances are the subject of this study based on German SOEP data (2001-2006). In contrast to previous studies we analyze the motives for remittances not only for foreigners but also for the broader group of individuals with a personal migration background. Major findings are: First, concerns about xenophobia lead to higher remittances. Second, income and gender has ...

Regional Income Stratification in Unified Germany Using a Gini Decomposition Approach

Using representative micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), this paper delivers new insights into the development of income inequality and regional stratification in Germany after unification. This paper applies a new method for detecting social stratification by a decomposition of the Gini index that yields the obligatory between- and within-group components as well as an 'overlapping' ...

Redistributive Impacts of Government and Private Household Activities: Trends in Equivalized Household Net Incomes and Intra-household Earnings in Germany, 1985-2005

The Impact of Household Capital Income on Income Inequality: A Factor Decomposition Analysis for Great Britain, Germany and the USA

This paper analyses the contribution of capital income to income inequality in a cross-national comparison. Using micro-data from the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) for three prominent panel studies, namely the BHPS for Great Britain, the SOEP for West Germany, and the PSID for the USA, a factor decomposition method described by Shorrocks (1982) is applied. The factor decomposition of disposable ...