We propose a framework for comparing the relationship between poverty and personal characteristics across countries (or across years), and use it to compare levels and patterns of relative poverty in the USA, Great Britain and Germany during the 1990s. The higher aggregate poverty rates in the USA and in Britain relative to Germany were mostly accounted for by higher poverty rates conditional on characteristics, ...
We use data from the 1996 wave of the European Community Household Panel to present and compare the weekly number of hours mothers of children less than 16 years of age reported looking after children in nine European countries in 1996. In addition, we explore to what extent cross-country differences in socio-demographic characteristics and parents' employment status contribute to differences in maternal ...
We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984 to 1995 to analyze longitudinal aspects of marginal employment (geringfügige Beschäftigung) in West Germany. After discussing problems of identifying marginal employment spells, we document that marginal employment spell vary considerably in the German labor market. Spell duration in our data ranges from one month to 12 years or more. Marginal ...
Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-Economic Panel, this research compares pathways into self-employment among men and women in the United States and Western Germany. Academic and vocational credentials are more important for stabilizing self-employment in the United States than in Germany, where the lack of credentials is a significant deterrent to ...
When German reunification was accompanied by a rapid decline in aggregate fertility rates, researchers particularly assigned high unemployment rates a dominant role for changes in fertility behavior. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we investigate changes in the timing of first birth in East Germany after reunification. Using data from the GSOEP, we show that even after reunification East Germans ...
This paper focuses on the structural relationship between family building and upward mobility. Typically this relationship is analyzed for women only, while we include men as well. With new patterns of intimate partnerships and non-traditional families, on the one hand, and a changing labor market, on the other hand, new assertions about their connection have emerged. Using SOEP-data, the possible ...
My research examines within-nation differences as well as cross-national differences in socially stratified outcomes, specifically the distribution of household incomes. I build on the considerable empirical evidence suggesting that group memberships are important factors in shaping one' s life course and in determining the level of social inequality. I examine seven years of longitudinal data from ...