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Press Release
A job loss has considerable negative consequences for those hit by unemployment. This is all the more relevant if families are affected. It not only relates to a family's financial situation: a mother losing her job can also impact on child development. A study conducted by DIW Berlin using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) shows that this is indeed the case as far as non-cognitive ...
14.08.2013
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Press Release
From August 2013, every child in Germany who has reached his or her first birthday will have a legal right to a place in a childcare facility or family day care. What effects does this have on the mothers' economic activity and child development? Our findings show that the legal entitlement to this type of formal care is expected to lead to an increase in mothers' gainful employment of up to two percentage ...
07.08.2013
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Press Release
Youth unemployment in Germany has fallen to its lowest level since German reunification. Between 2005 and 2012, unemployment among under 25 year olds has more than halved. By international standards, Germany is in an exceptionally good position. Nowhere in Europe is youth unemployment lower. However, this is not so much due to structural improvements or positive labor market growth than to demographic ...
08.05.2013
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Press Release
Many banks are now too big, complex, and closely networked to be wound up. When they get into difficulties, they threaten the entire fi-nancial system of their economic area. Five years of financial crisis have not alleviated but exacerbated this problem. The cost of stabilizing banks is enormous, posing serious challenges for the states affected. In addition, such state guarantees create dangerously ...
02.05.2013
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Press Release
When speculative price bubbles on real estate markets burst, the results are often distortions in the real economy, associated with substantial losses in production and employment. This paper discusses the degree to which institutional frameworks can prevent speculative bubbles from forming and expanding. Comparing experiences in different countries, it shows that in Germany institutional regulations ...
24.04.2013
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Press Release
The German economy will experience significantly stronger growth up to 2017 than it has in the past five years. Economic growth will increasingly be driven by domestic demand, and job creation will continue. In the medium term, there will be increasing surpluses in public budgets; in 2017, these will reach almost 28 billion euros. At the beginning of the projection period - as in recent years ...
16.04.2013
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Press Release
The article analyzes the question of whether career politicians differ systematically from the general population in terms of their attitudes toward risk. A written survey of members of the 17th German Bundestag in late 2011 identified their risk attitudes, and the survey data was set in relation to respondents to the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the survey year 2009 (2002 through 2012). ...
06.03.2013
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Press Release
Since last year, Germany has not even been runner-up in visible exports. It has been overtaken by China, and now the US, on the list of the most prolific global exporting nations. But does this mean losing more than just an attention-grabbing title? Are exports becoming less important to Germany? A closer look at structures and trade patterns shows that in fact the opposite is true. Exports have never ...
06.03.2013
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Press Release
Numerous people in Germany, including politicians and researchers, believe that the gross domestic product (GDP) is an outdated indicator of a society's prosperity. Therefore, at the end of 2010, the German Bundestag, the federal parliament, established a study commission (Enquete-Kommission) tasked with developing an alternative to the GDP for measuring growth, prosperity, and quality of life. This ...
01.03.2013
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Press Release
Over the past two decades, the number of self-employed in Germany has risen dramatically. This is almost exclusively due to an increasing number of self-employed persons without employees (solo entrepreneurs). There has been a particularly marked escalation in the number of self-employed women. Although some solo entrepreneurs command high incomes, the average earnings of this section of the workforce ...
13.02.2013
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Press Release
Between 2001 and 2011, the number of retirement-aged people in Germany still in employment approximately doubled to almost 760,000. The over-65 age group rose faster than any other in the workforce during this period. DIW Berlin has examined the employment situation of older workers in Germany in an attempt to find the underlying causes of this sharp increase. The results: the reason for this significant ...
06.02.2013
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Press Release
Young people tend to smoke more, do less sport, and are more frequently overweight, the lower their mother's school-leaving qualifications. This has been shown by a study conducted by DIW Berlin using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). At least some of these health-related differences can be causally attributed to the mother's education. Social differences are already reflected ...
30.01.2013
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Press Release
For many years, securing equal life opportunities has been a normative goal shared by all democratic societies in the western world. Although, in principle, all citizens enjoy the same rights, in reality, individual life opportunities still vary according to family background which, in turn, shapes the prevailing pattern of social inequality. This is not a specifically German phenomenon. Based on a ...
23.01.2013
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Press Release
Despite companies' commitment to more women in top-level management, at the end of 2012 only four percent of all seats on the executive boards and 12.9 percent on the supervisory boards of the top 200 companies in Germany were occupied by women. This corresponds to an increase of one percentage point on the previous year in both cases. Nevertheless, at the end of the year, the proportion of women ...
16.01.2013
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Press Release
The German economy has recently lost momentum but is anticipated to accelerate markedly in the course of 2013. On annual average, real GDP will increase by 0.9 percent; the corresponding figure for 2012 is expected to be 0.8 percent. During the course of 2013, however, expansion will accelerate noticeably. The German economy will grow slightly over two percent in 2014. The temporary economic weakness ...
09.01.2013
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Press Release
Wochenbericht 51-52/2012 Interview mit Erika Schulz
The rise in the number of old and very old persons, contingent on demographic factors, and the substantial reduction in the number of people of working age present a major challenge to the care industry. Although many of those needing care today are looked after by family members at home, they are increasingly reliant on the support of out-patient ...
20.12.2012
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Press Release
The significance of the manufacturing sector for the economies of both the European Union and the euro area has declined dramatically over the past ten years. However, development varied between the individual member states, which is particularly evident in a comparison between Germany and France. The manufacturing industry in Germany was able to maintain its position within the national economy, halting ...
28.11.2012
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Press Release
In an electricity industry increasingly characterized by renewable energy sources, there is much controversy surrounding the future of lignite in Germany. In all three lignite mining regions (Rhineland, central Germany, and Lausitz), there are plans for new lignite-fired power stations and open-cast mines. A study conducted by DIW Berlin comes to the conclusion that construction of new lignite-fired ...
28.11.2012
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Press Release
Having barely registered an increase at the beginning of the new millennium, during the economic upturn after 2009, mileage traveled by registered motor vehicles in Germany experienced significant growth, both in the case of utility vehicles and automobiles. Overall, in 2011, mileage traveled by automobiles was greater than ever before. Despite more efficient engineering, this resulted in fuel consumption ...
21.11.2012
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Press Release
Abstract:
09.11.2012