The self-employed are among those facing the highest probability of strong income losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments in many countries introduced support programs to support the self-employed, including the German federal government, which approved a €50bn emergency aid program at the end of March 2020 offering one-off lump-sum payments of up to €15,000 to those facing...
The main objective of this project is to analyse how inequalities in old age have developed over time and birth cohorts, to what extent public policies have influenced these trends, and to assess the potential of sociopolitical reforms to reduce such inequalities. This project analyses and compares data and sociopolitical reforms (retirement and longterm care) from North America (Canada), Western...
This article quantifies differences in personality skills (Big Five Factor, locus of control, reciprocity, life goals and risk) and their assimilation rate between first-generation immigrants and native Germans, using the SOEP survey. The results reveal that the two groups differentiate in their personality traits but immigrants do not tend to assimilate natives during...
The role of skill-biased technological change for increasing wage inequality is well documented. Interestingly, we find that even though in Germany from 1986 to 2012 wage inequality rose, the wage penalty of a disadvantaged family background declined. Our analysis shows that this development is consistently linked to technological progress. The introduction and the use of...
This paper examines how culture determines within-couple gender inequality. Exploiting the setting of Germany's division and reunification, I compare child penalties of couples socialised in a more gender-egalitarian culture to those in a gender-traditional culture. The long-run penalty on the female income share is 30.9% in West German couples, compared to 18.3% in East German...
The Corona pandemic has had a decisive impact on the year 2020 and an unprecedented (negative) impact on society and the economy. At the core of this simulation study is therefore the question of how the Corona pandemic has affected income levels and social inequality in Germany, and to what extent automatic stabilizers of the social security system and additional financial...