Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Demographic Trends and the Changing Ability of Households to Buffer Poverty Risks in Germany

The article investigates how demographic trends influenced households’ abilities to compensate for low or lacking earnings among their members. I focus on the probability that household earnings excluding those of the respondent are above the poverty threshold. The share of households where this is the case declined sharply between 1993–1996 and 2009–2012, implying a deterioration of households’ potential ...

Poverty Trends in Germany and Great Britain: The Impact of Changes in Labour Markets, Families, and Social Policy

Jan Brülle shows how poverty risks in Germany between 1992 and 2012 increased concentrated on those with low educational levels, in lower occupational positions, and with precarious employment careers, as the country’s welfare state failed to adapt to widening inequalities in households’ market incomes. Contrasting the German experience with Great Britain, where social transfers to low-income families ...

Changing labour market risks in the service economy: Low wages, part-time employment and the trend in working poverty risks in Germany

The article presents an analysis of the development of labour market risks in Germany in light of changing working poverty risks. Low hourly wages and part-time employment are identified as the main demand-side-related mechanisms for household poverty. Their measurement and development are discussed as well as their contribution to trends in working poverty risks. A rise in low wages, especially among ...

The Effect of Economic Downturns on Apprenticeships and Initial Workplace Training: A Review of the Evidence

The existing empirical evidence on the relationship between apprenticeships, initial workplace training and economic downturns, is relatively scarce. The bottom line of this literature is that ratio of apprentices to employees tends to be (mildly) pro-cyclical and to decline during a recession, with the notable exception of the Great Depression, when it rose (at least in England). When broader measures ...

Does School Tracking Affect Equality of Opportunity? New International Evidence

Economic consequences of immigration in Europe

Occupational Recognition and Immigrant Labor Market Outcomes

In this paper, we analyze how the formal recognition of immigrants' foreign occupational qualifications afects their subsequent labor market outcomes. The empirical analysis is based on a novel German data set that links respondents' survey information to their administrative records, allowing us to observe immigrants at monthly intervals before, during and after their application for occupational ...

Migration and Imperfect Labor Markets: Theory and Cross-Country Evidence from Denmark, Germany and the UK

We investigate the labor market effects of immigration in Denmark, Germany and the UK, three countries which are characterized by considerable differences in labor market institutions and welfare states. Institutions such as collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection and unemployment benefits affect the way in which wages respond to labor supply shocks, and, hence, the labor market ...

Migration and Wage Setting: Reassessing the Labor Effects of Migration

This paper employs a wage-setting approach to analyze the labor market effects of immigration into Germany. The wage-setting framework relies on the assumption that wages tend to decline with the unemployment rate, albeit imperfectly. This enables us to consider labor market rigidities, which are particularly relevant in Europe. We find that the elasticity of the wage-setting curve is particularly ...

Forced Migration, Arrival in Germany, and First Steps toward Integration

A new representative survey of a total of 4,500 recently arrived refugees to Germany conducted by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the Research Centre of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ), and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) has generated an entirely new database for analyzing forced migration and the ...