The Covid-19 pandemic poses numerous societal challenges. We will examine how it affects distinct social and at-risk groups in Germany, what it implies for societal inequalities, and what role welfare state measures play. First, we will describe the situation of the population before and during the pandemic in the health and the socio-economic domain. In each domain, we will study a set of core...
This online workshop on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on societal inequalities is organized as kick-off for the research project “GaPRisk – Groups put at Particular Risk by Covid-19”. The project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and is a cooperation between the DIW Berlin, the Robert Koch Institute, and Bielefeld University. The PIs of the project are...
The Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at DIW Berlin and the University of Bremen are working together to develop a household panel study on the topic of social cohesion. The survey is being conducted by the infas Institute for Applied Social Science under the name “Zusammenleben in Deutschland,” or “Living Together in Germany.” The University of Bremen is taking part in the...
We explore the role of social mobility as driver of economic development. First, we draw the geography of intergenerational mobility of education for 52 Latin American regions, as well as its evolution over time. Then, through a novel weighting procedure that considers the aggregate participation of cohorts to the economy in every year, we estimate the effect of changes in mobility on economic...
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...