Topic Inequality

Midijob Reform: Increased Redistribution in Pension Insurance – Noticeable Costs, Relief Not Well Targeted

The German Federal Government has expanded subsidies for employees with low gross wages (midijob employees) as of January 1, 2023, and raised the upper earnings limit to 2,000 euros. As a result, around 6.2 million midijob employees will benefit from paying reduced social security contributions while still receiving their full pension entitlements, made possible by a redistribution within the social ...

Causal Misperceptions of the Part-Time Pay Gap

This paper studies if workers infer from correlation about causal effects in the context of the part-time wage penalty. Differences in hourly pay between full-time and part-time workers are strongly driven by worker selection and systematic sorting. Ignoring these selection effects can lead to biased expectations about the consequences of working part-time on wages (’selection neglect bias’). Based ...

Causal Misperceptions of the Part-time Pay Gap

In this paper, we analyze if an increase in the working life leads to more human capital investment via on-the-job training. We obtain RDD-estimates from a sharp date-of-birth cut-off, generated by a pension reform that increased the Early Retirement Age (ERA) by three years for many women in Germany. In our preferred specification, we find that this reform causally increased on-the-job training by ...

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

Distributional National Accounts: A Macro- Micro Approach to Inequality in Germany

Gender Gaps in Employment, Working Hours and Wages in Germany: Trends and Developments over the Last 35 Years

Executive Boards Remain Dominated By Men, but Change Is Finally Coming: Editorial

Markedly More Women on Executive Boards of Large Companies; Inclusion Requirement Seemingly Already Having an Effect

There was a significant increase in the number of women on executive boards of large companies in Germany from 2020 to 2021 after years of slow progress: In fall 2021, there were 139 women on the executive boards of the 200 largest companies, 38 more than in 2020. This is an increase of a good three percentage points to almost 15 percent, the largest seen since the beginning of the DIW Berlin Women ...

While Gender Quotas for Top Positions in the Private Sector Differ across EU Countries, They Are Effective Overall

This second report in the DIW Berlin Women Executives Barometer 2022 explores the designs and effects of gender quotas across Europe, coming to the conclusion that they are an effective instrument for increasing the share of women in top positions at large companies. Furthermore, the quotas differ greatly between the countries, for example in regard to the number of companies subject to the quota, ...

Care and Careers: Gender (In)Equality in Unpaid Care, Housework and Employment

This article examines whether reducing care and housework duties and redistributing them within different-sex couples could further enhance gender equality on the labor market in terms of labor market participation for different employment types and actual working hours. Women around the world perform the majority of unpaid care and housework, with a large and persistent gap to men. Most research explains ...