Topic Inequality

Workshop on the Integration of Refugee Families in Host Countries: Research Advances, Policy Improvements, and Data Challenges

This one-day workshop aims to bring together researchers working on various aspects of the integration of refugee families into host societies and discuss the most recent research developments in this field. It also aims to discuss empirical research, data collection, and policy challenges in view of the new waves of refugees expected to arrive to Europe in the near future. To this end, the...

Generational Wealth Inequality Across the Distribution: Trends in the U.S. since 1949

Using recently published U.S. long-run microdata (SCF+), we document that — for people born in the first half of the 20th century — median wealth used to increase from one ten-year birth cohort to another. For people born in the second half, median wealth successively declined from cohort to cohort and wealth inequality within birth cohorts has markedly increased. Shifts in...

Unconditional Basic Income: from theory to practice

This paper aims to investigate whether Van Parijs' theory of Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) can address the criticism of the lack of individual responsibility on the part of recipients. To do so, I relate this UBI theory to the results of field experiments that study the impact of UBI on employment. Theoretical and empirical results suggest that the UBI does not lead to a decrease in labor...

Health Policy and Access to Health Care in Germany: A Fragmented System for Asylum Seekers’ Health

In Germany, health needs of citizens and ordinary residents are taken care of under the scope of statutory social and health insurance. The asylum-seeking population, however, receives healthcare through a parallel system, where decisions on provision of health services are not met at a central health governance level, but rather at federal state and sometimes at municipal...

Special SOEP-Seminar

This paper evaluates the effects of the newly introduced German minimum wage on the distribution of hourly wages and hours worked. The study is based on the German Structure of Earnings Survey (GSES), the only large scale data set for Germany that includes information on hourly wages and hours worked. We provide a full distributional analysis based on counterfactual distributions that would have...

Europe’s biggest Basic Income pilot project. The Catalan case.

After the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, Catalonia is set to be the place of the most ambitious Universal Basic Income (UBI) pilot experiment in Europe to date. Up to 5,000 participants will be selected to receive for two years (2023-2024) an individual cash benefit of 800 EUR (300 EUR for minors), unconditionally. The Catalan pilot project will also test the...

Perceptions of Inequalities and Justice in Europe (PIJE) Summer Workshop

This two-day workshop aims to bring together again researchers of all project partners (SOEP/DIW Berlin, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität Hamburg, Universität Konstanz, Universität Wien, Radboud University, New York University, MPI für Sozialrecht und Sozialpolitik, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) for presentation and discussion of work packages and research...

Gender Differences in Job Search and the Earnings Gap: Evidence from the Field and the Lab

The Costs of Natural Gas Dependency: Price Shocks, Inequality, and Public Policy

Natural gas prices in Germany saw a strong increase at the end of 2021, subsequently worsening with the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, raising concerns about the distributional consequences. Our study shows that low-income households are affected the most by the natural gas price increase. Low-income households pay at the median 11.70 percent of their equivalent income on gas bills, ...

The Gender Gap in Lifetime Earnings: The Role of Parenthood

To obtain a more complete understanding of the persisting gender earnings gap in Germany, this paper investigates both the cross-sectional and biographical dimension of gender inequalities. Using an Oaxaca Blinder decomposition, we show that the gender gap in annual earnings is largely driven by women’s lower work experience and intensive margin of labor supply. Based on a dynamic microsimulation model, ...