Topic Inequality

WEALTHTRAJECT: Understanding Trajectories of Wealth Accumulation and Their Variability

As part of the ERC Consolidator Grant WEALTHTRAJECT, Philipp Lersch will break new ground in wealth research over the next five years, and further expand the range of high quality data collection by SOEP. WEALTHTRAJECT is the first project to comprehensively and systematically investigate diversity in long-term wealth trajectories within and between social groups. The starting point of the...

Workshop on Life-course Inequality Dynamics

Concerns about inequality and questions of social justice and cohesion have re-entered the public arena and animate debate. In his Nobel prize lecture in 2015, Angus Deaton has outlined three imperatives that are key to understanding inequalities and formulating welfare-enhancing policies: (I) Differences in resources across individuals should be measured not only at specific points in time but...

Life satisfaction has increased in many areas

CO²-Footprint is too large

DECIPHE – Demographic Change and the Intergenerational Persistence in Homeownership in Europe

DECIPHE is the first project to comprehensively study whether and how profound demographic changes in Europe impact the intergenerational persistence of homeownership, considering variations across countries, regions, and birth cohorts. It adopts a life course framework on housing tenure, in which individuals’ homeownership is shaped by their household members’ preferences and resources and...

Assessing the Measurement Quality of Justice Evaluations of Earnings in Europe

How individuals perceive the fairness of their pay carries profound implications for individuals and society. Perceptions of pay injustice are linked to a spectrum of negative outcomes, including diminished well-being, poor health, increased stress, and depressive symptoms, alongside various detrimental effects in the work domain. Despite the far-reaching impact of these justice evaluations, validity ...

Herkunftsspezifische Unterschiede im Privatschulbesuch: Wie viel erklärt die geografische Verteilung privater Schulangebote?

In Deutschland ist die Zahl der Privatschulen seit 1992 erheblich gestiegen, insbesondere in Ostdeutschland. Diese Schulen werden überwiegend von SchülerInnen aus sozioökonomisch privilegierten Haushalten besucht, während Kinder aus einkommensschwachen Familien seltener vertreten sind. In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir, ob die räumliche Verteilung der Privatschulen mit sozialen Ungleichheiten beim ...

The Gender Gap in Fair Earnings Increases with Age Due to Higher Age Premium for Men

This study explores how gender and age interact in shaping beliefs about fair pay through a factorial survey experiment conducted with German employees. Respondents evaluated hypothetical worker descriptions varying in age, gender, and earnings. While no gender gap in fair earnings was found for the youngest hypothetical workers, a significant gap favoring men emerged with increasing age. This suggests ...

Income Effects of Disability Benefits

We provide novel evidence about the incentive and welfare effects of an increase in the generosity of disability benefits. Importantly, a unique policy variation in Germany allows us to isolate the income effect of a change in benefit generosity. We leverage this quasi-experimental policy variation using an RD design to estimate the effect of increasing disability benefits on employment, earnings, ...

Paying Income Tax after a Natural Disaster

We investigate the effects of a climatic shock on individuals’ tax deduction and tax payable patterns, alongside their income dynamics. Using individual-level annual tax return data and exploiting the 2010–2011 Queensland Floods in Australia as a natural experiment, we find that the floods affect different income groups differently. They also lead to persistent higher tax deductions for high-income ...