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Insurance, Redistribution, and the Inequality of Lifetime Income

Individuals vary considerably in how much they earn during their lifetimes. This study examines the role of the tax‐and‐transfer system in mitigating such inequalities, which could otherwise lead to disparities in living standards. Utilizing a life‐cycle model, we determine that the tax‐and‐transfer system offsets 45% of lifetime earnings inequality attributed to differences in productive abilities ...

Income Effects of Disability Benefits

We provide novel evidence about the incentive and welfare effects of an increase in the generosity of disability benefits. Importantly, a unique policy variation in Germany allows us to isolate the income effect of a change in benefit generosity. We leverage this quasi-experimental policy variation using an RD design to estimate the effect of increasing disability benefits on employment, earnings, ...

Wealth and Its Distribution in Germany, 1895-2021

German history over the past 125 years has been turbulent. Marked by two world wars, revolutions and major regime changes, as well as a hyperinflation and three currency reforms, expropriations and territorial divisions, it comprises extreme shocks to study the role of historical events, taxation, asset price changes, portfolio heterogeneity in affecting the wealth distribution in the long run. Combining ...

The Gender Pension Gap Grows the More Children a Woman Has

The gender pension gap, the difference in pension entitlements between men and women, is 32 percent for 60-yearolds according to data from the German Pension Insurance (Deutsche Rentenversicherung). In addition, there is a considerable motherhood pension gap: Statutory pension entitlements for mothers and childless women differ greatly. Pension-related childcare credits, which were introduced in 1986 ...

The Effect of Pension Wealth on Employment

This study provides novel evidence about the pension wealth elasticity of employment. For the identification we exploit reform-induced variation of pension wealth that is related to the number of children but which does not affect the implicit tax rate of employment. We use a difference-in-differences estimator based on administrative data from the German pension insurance and find that, on average, ...

Relieve through midijob reform

Do Natural Disasters affect Retirement Savings? Evidence from Queensland Floods 2010-2011

Pension funds carry implications on citizens wellbeing in their retirement years and countries’ growths, rendering changes to them following natural disasters of great importance. Using administrative data that comprises a 10 percent random sample of the Australian population and a natural experimental design, we investigate the effects of natural disasters on retirement savings in the aftermath...

GETTSIM – Contributions to an Open Source Tax- and Transfers Simulator

This project serves to further develop the open source software GETTSIM. GETTSIM is a simulation model written in the programming language Python, which can depict the German tax and transfer system. The software offers a multitude of applications in research and teaching. It is developed in cooperation with the IZA (Institute of Labor Economics) as well as other German research institutes and...

The effect of pension reforms on old age poverty

This project analyses various reform and labour market scenarios with regard to their impact on old-age poverty in the period up to 2045. These are changes to the lower limit for the level of protection in the GRV (holding lines), the pension adjustment rule, a higher retirement age, a generous exemption scheme for pension income from the GRV for basic security, and increased gainful employment at...

Increasing disability benefits: selection and labor market effects.

We study the incentive and labor market effects of disability benefit programs using unique policy variation in Germany. In 2014, disability benefits of new recipients were increased considerably while eligibility criteria were not changed. We exploit this quasi-experimental policy variation to test the implications at two different margins. First, we analyze to what extent an increase in the...