Real estate is taxed at comparatively low rates in Germany, with primarily the affluent benefiting from numerous existing tax privileges. This Weekly Report describes the current state of real estate taxation in Germany and outlines reform proposals that could increase tax revenue, improve the efficiency of the tax system, and reduce wealth and income inequality. In the case of property tax, value-based ...
We examine the gender wealth gap with a focus on pension wealth and statutory pension rights. By taking into account employment characteristics of women and men, we are able and identify the extent to which the redistributive effect of pension rights reduces the gap. The empirical basis of this examination is the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), which is one of the few datasets where information on wealth ...
After an economically tough start into the new millennium, Germany experienced an unprecedented employment boom after 2005 only stopped by the COVID-19 pandemic. Persistently high levels of inequality despite a booming labour market and drastically falling unemployment rates constituted a puzzle, suggesting either that the German job miracle mainly benefitted individuals in the mid- or high-income range ...
Im Rahmen einer Längsschnittanalyse des sozio-oekonomischen Panels gehen wir der Frage nach, wie sich Diskriminierungswahrnehmungen von Einwanderern und ihren Nachkommen im Laufe des Integrationsprozesses verändern. Insgesamt betrachtet fühlen sich Migrantinnen und Migranten, deren Integration weiter fortgeschritten ist, seltener aufgrund ihrer Herkunft benachteiligt. Allerdings zeigen gruppenspezifische ...
This paper studies the effects of Covid-19 related daycare and school closures on gender role attitudes toward maternal employment in Germany. We compare women and men with dependent children to those without children one year after the outbreak of the pandemic. Using data on gender role attitudes from 2008 through 2021, we find that fathers’ egalitarian attitudes toward maternal employment dropped ...
We study the impact of selection bias on estimates of the gender pay gap, focusing on whether the gender pay gap has fallen since 1981. Previous research has found divergent results across techniques, identification strategies, data sets, and time periods. Using Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data and a number of different identification strategies, we find robust evidence that, after controlling ...
Substantial educational inequalities have been documented in Germany for decades. In this article, we examine whether educational inequalities among children have increased or remained the same since the school closures of spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our perspective is longitudinal: We compare the amount of time children in secondary schools spent on school-related activities at home ...
Happiness is strongly associated with goal attainment, productivity, mental health and suicidal risk. This paper examines the effect of satisfaction with areas of life on subjective well-being (SWB), the importance of relative perceptions compared to absolute measures in predicting overall life satisfaction, and differences in the domains of life which have the greatest impact on happiness of men and ...
Amid concerns of long-term economic consequences of divorce, cross-sectional research illustrated that ever-divorce men but particularly women hold less per capita wealth than continuously married spouses in older age. Using a longitudinal approach and unique personal-level wealth data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, the present study aims to understand how divorce stratifies men’s and ...
The income gradient in political participation is a widely accepted stylized fact. This article asks how income effects on political involvement unfold over time. Using nine panel datasets from six countries, it analyzes whether income changes have short-term effects on political involvement, whether effects vary across the life-cycle, and whether parental income has an independent influence. Irrespective ...