Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

More than just Nickels and Dimes: A Cross-National Analysis of Working Poverty in Affluent Democracies

Despite its centrality to contemporary inequality, working poverty is often popularly discussed but rarely studied by sociologists. Using the Luxembourg Income Study, we analyze whether an individual is working poor across 18 affluent democracies circa 2000. We demonstrate that working poverty does not simply mirror overall poverty and that there is greater cross-national variation in working than ...

How to measure and proxy permanent income: evidence from Germany and the U.S

Permanent income (PI) is an enduring concept in the social sciences and is highly relevant to the study of inequality. Nevertheless, there has been insufficient progress in measuring PI. We calculate a novel measure of PI with the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Advancing beyond prior approaches, we define PI as the logged average of 20+ years of post-tax ...

Nearly universal, but somewhat distinct: The feminization of poverty in affluent Western democracies, 1969-2000

Party to Inequality: Right Party Power and Income Inequality in Affluent Western Democracies

Much social science suggests that income inequality is a product of economic and demographic factors and recent work highlights the influence of Leftist politics in affluent Western democracies. But, prior research has neglected rightist politics. We examine the impact of cumulative right party power on three measures of income inequality in an unbalanced panel of 16 affluent Western democracies from ...

Terminal decline in well-being: The role of multi-indicator constellations of physical health and psychosocial correlates

Well-being is often relatively stable across adulthood and old age, but typically exhibits pronounced deteriorations and vast individual differences in the terminal phase of life. However, the factors contributing to these differences are not well understood. Using up to 25-year annual longitudinal data obtained from 4,404 now-deceased participants of the nationwide German Socio-Economic Panel Study ...

Measurement of Income Distribution in Supranational Entities: The Case of the European Union

Urban Poverty in Developed Countries

Asset-related measures of poverty and economic stress

Poverty is generally defined as income or expenditure insufficiency, but the economic condition of a household also depends on its real and financial asset holdings as well as on the possibility to access the credit market. This paper investigates notions of poverty which rely on indicators of household net worth. We review and assess three main approaches followed in the literature: income-net worth ...

The Distribution of Well-Being among Europeans

We analyse the evolution of EU citizens’ living standards, considering the EU as a single country. Average living standards have improved considerably as the European integration process has unfolded. EU28 income inequality has steadily declined, mostly as a result of the macroeconomic convergence of new EU-accession countries. EU15 income inequality fell steadily until the mid-1980s, but picked up ...

Inequality Patterns in Western-Type Democracies: Cross-Country Differences and Time Changes

This paper compares levels and trends in income inequality in industrialized nations. In the mid-1990s, the United States had the highest overall level of inequality of any rich OECD nation, while Northern and Central European countries had the lowest levels. Using a variety of national sources, no common trend is observed in the last quarter of a century. The inequality of disposable incomes increased ...