Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Earnings Inequality

Inequality has increased considerably in many Western countries over the past decades. When dealing with economic inequality as a research subject the question "inequality of what among whom" arises. Analyses of inequality are typically concerned with the distribution of wages, earnings or income and have been performed by different strands in the literature, mainly in public and in labor ...

Does Size Matter? The Impact of Changes in Household Structure on Income Distribution in Germany

Income inequality in Germany has been continually increasing during the past 20 years. One cause of this development, among others, could be structural shifts in household formation due to long-term societal trends. These affect per capita incomes, which has repercussions for the income distribution even if wages remain constant. The aim of this paper is to quantify the proportion of changing household ...

The Politicians’ Wage Gap: Insights from German Members of Parliament

Using a unique dataset of German members of parliament with information on total earnings including outside income, this paper analyzes the politicians’ wage gap (PWG). After controlling for observable characteristics as well as accounting for selection into politics, we find a positive PWG which is statistically and economically significant. It amounts to 40-60% compared to citizens with an executive ...

Measuring Richness and Poverty: A Micro Data Application to Europe and Germany

In this paper, we define a new class of richness measures. In contrast to the often used headcount, these new measures are sensitive to changes in rich individuals' incomes and, therefore, allow for a more sophisticated analysis of richness. We demonstrate the application of these new measures in analyzing the development of poverty and richness over time in Germany. Moreover, we compare Germany ...

Documentation IZAΨMOD: The IZA Policy SImulation MODel

This paper describes IZAΨMOD, the policy microsimulation model of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). The model uses household microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study and firm data from the German linked employer-employee dataset LIAB. IZAΨMOD consists of three components: First, a static module simulates the effects of a tax reform on the budget of the individual households. Secondly, ...

Accounting for Labor Demand Effects in Structural Labor Supply Models

When assessing the effects of policy reforms on the labor market, most studies only focus on labor supply. The interaction of supply and demand side is not explicitly modeled, which might lead to biased estimates of potential labor market outcomes. This paper proposes a straightforward method to remedy this shortcoming. We use information on firms’ labor demand behavior and feed them into a structural ...

Accounting for the Spouse when Measuring Inequality of Opportunity

The existing literature on inequality of opportunity (IOp) has not addressed the question of how the circumstances and choices of spouses in a couple should be treated. By omitting information relevant to the spouse in IOp estimations, the implicit assumption has been full responsibility for the spouse’s income, effort and circumstance variables. In this paper, we discuss whether or not the spouse’s ...

Equality of Opportunity: East vs. West Germany

The case of German reunification has been subject to extensive research on earnings inequality and labour market integration. However, little is known about the development of equality of opportunity (EOp) in East and West Germany after 1990. Using German micro data, we empirically analyse how circumstances beyond the sphere of individual control relate to inequality in East and West Germany. Our results ...

Real Wage Cyclicality in Germany and the UK: New Results Using Panel Data

The European Community Household Panel: A review