„Future of capital funded old age provision in Germany – sovereign wealth funds versus individual retirement accounts“Editors: Timm Bönke, Markus M. Grabka and Carsten SchröderIn May 2018, the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs duly convened the pension commission “reliable inter-generational contract (Verlässlicher Generationenvertrag)”. ...
Between 1991 and 2015, the real disposable, needs-adjusted income of persons in private households in Germany rose by 15 percent on average. The majority of the population has benefited from the growth in real income, but the groups at the lower end of the income distribution have not. Inequality in both market and disposable needs-adjusted household income has remained high. These are the findings ...
This study investigates professional social mobility, i.e., changes in one’s occupational status compared to that of their parents. It uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (Sozio-ökonomisches Panel, SOEP) on middle-aged, western Germans who were born between 1939 and 1971. On average, social status relative to parents has increased (absolute social mobility). However, looking at ...
Wolfgang Zapf, former SOEP Director and longtime supporter and advocate for the SOEP, passed away in late April at the age of 81.
Wolfgang Zapf was instrumental in the founding of the SOEP study in the early 1980s, together with colleagues in the fields of sociology and economics. He has had an enduring influence on the measurement concepts used in the SOEP, and his quality of life concept has become ...
Martin Kroh, former Division Head of Survey Methodology and Management at the SOEP, has been appointed Professor of Methods of Empirical Social Research with a focus on quantitative methods at the University of Bielefeld starting January 1, 2018.
He will continue to support the SOEP in the area of survey methodology during a transitional period and also work on joint ongoing research projects.
Despite the booming German labor market, wage inequality is still a relevant issue. In the present study, the authors report on the changes in wages and their distribution between 1992 and 2016. In addition to real contractual gross hourly wages, we closely examined gross monthly and annual wages. Based on Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data, the results show that wage inequality rose significantly between ...
The DIW Graduate Center is happy to welcome its new vice dean, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schupp. He currently holds a position as Professor at the Free University of Berlin Institute of Sociology. His research interests include survey methodology, social structures analysis and social inequalities.
Prof. Schupp has a long history of working at the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) of the DIW. He played ...
The top 10% of income earners in Germany earn almost as much as the middle 40% – the top 1%’s share of national income has increased from eight to 13 percent since 1995.
The share of national income belonging to the top 1% of income earners has grown significantly in Germany since the mid-1990s, while the share earned by the bottom 50% has significantly decreased. These are the main findings ...
Gert G. Wagner, who served as a member of the German Institute for Economic Research's executive board from 2011 to 2017, will celebrate his 65th birthday on January 5. The economist and social scientist was the head of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) research infrastructure at DIW Berlin from 1989 to 2011 and developed it into the largest and longest-running long-term study on social and economic ...
The Institute of Employment Research (IAB), the Information Centre for Asylum and Migration of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ), and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) are currently working together on a longitudinal survey of refugees. The survey research institute Kantar Public (formerly TNS Infratest) has been commissioned ...
Since autumn of 2011, the SOEP has been offering in-house traineeships to students who are studying to be specialists in market and social research (Fachangestellte für Markt- und Sozialforschung, FAMS), a three-year degree program that is part of the German dual system of vocational training. Specialists in market and social research are responsible for organizational and operational tasks in ...
The introduction of the minimum wage in Germany led to significant increases in wages –– However, around seven percent of eligible workers earn less than minimum wage, with the marginally employed and employees at small businesses being particularly affected –– When one also takes into account workers who are not eligible for a minimum wage, such as freelancers, a total of around ...
On January 1, 2018, Liebig will become director of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and a member of the institute’s Executive Board
Stefan Liebig, a professor of sociology at Bielefeld University, will succeed Gert G. Wagner as a member of the German Institute for Economic Research’s Executive Board on January 1, 2018. Having reached retirement age, Wagner (64) is relinquishing his position. ...
Christian Krekel, who worked at the department of German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), has successfully defended his dissertation at the Paris School of Economics.The dissertation with the title "Evaluating the Non-Monetary Impacts of Major Events, Infrastructure, and Institutions" was supervised by Prof. Dr. Claudia Senik (Paris School of Economics) and Prof. Dr. Gert G. Wagner (DIW Berlin, Technical ...
Nicolas R. Ziebarth (35), a student of the DIW Graduate Center’s first class, was promoted to “Associate Professor with indefinite tenure” in the Department for Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (USA). Ziebarth’s area of research is applied health and labor economics.
“It’s especially remarkable for an economist with a Ph.D. ...
Towards the very end of this legislative period, a cross-caucus parliamentary majority gave same-sex marriage the green light – progress for the legal equality of homosexuals in Germany. This report focuses on the life situations of homosexual and bisexual people in Germany. The careers they pursue, for example, differ from those of heterosexuals. Hourly wages are an area of significant disparity: ...
This report examines how income groups and forms of employment in Germany have changed in the past two decades. Since the mid-1990s, inequality in disposable household income in Germany has generally increased. This trend was in effect until 2005. While fewer people had disposable incomes in the median range, the proportion of the population at both tails of the income distribution increased. At the ...
14.07.2017| Christian Franz, Marcel Fratzscher, Peter Krause
Mr. Krause, you took a close look at income groups in Germany. What did you hope to accomplish?
Peter Krause: We wanted to bring together two discussion threads in our study. One thread has to do with the long-term trend in inequality of household income distribution and the other, with changes in labor force participation. Until the mid-2000s, inequality in disposable household income increased and ...
Our new brochure “Living in Germany” offers a compact source of information about the kinds of research currently being done with SOEP data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and key findings from these studies. In the brochure, we present a selection of research results with significant implications for society and policy making from the more than 7,000 papers published to date using ...
Demographic projections for Germany indicate a drop in the population of many regions by 2030. This is likely to have an impact on the real estate market. Our report presents the result of a model calculation of asking prices for residential real estate in Germany up to 2030 based on market data from empirica-systeme GmbH and a population projection from the Bertelsmann Foundation. Depending on the ...