We propose a framework for comparing the relationship between poverty and personal characteristics across countries (or across years), and use it to compare levels and patterns of relative poverty in the USA, Great Britain and Germany during the 1990s. The higher aggregate poverty rates in the...

We examine the impact of family income during childhood on the type of secondary school that German children attend, a good indicator of their lifetime socioeconomic attainment. By contrast with several US child outcome studies, we find that late-childhood income is a more important determinant...

We analyze potential labor supply effects of a shift from the current German system of joint taxation of married couples to a system of limited real income splitting on the basis of an econometric household labor supply model embedded in a tax-benefit model. Our simulation results show...

On behavioural theory basis, this article analyses whether religion influences married women in Germany in their decision to supply labour. Gender roles and accompanying attitudes toward the appropriate division of labour among spouses might differ across religious groups depending on the...

Why do people work unpaid overtime? We show that remarkable long-term labor earnings gains are associated with unpaid overtime in West Germany. A descriptive analysis suggests that over a 10-year period workers with unpaid overtime experience on average at least a 10 percentage points higher...

This paper presents new evidence on the distribution of risk attitudes in the population, using a novel set of survey questions and a representative sample of roughly 22,000 individuals living in Germany. Using a question that asks about willingness to take risks on an 11-point scale, we find...

Over the last decades the German education system underwent numerous reforms in order to improve equality of opportunity, i.e. to guarantee all pupils equal access to higher education. At the same time internationally comparative evidence yields that Germany features particularly low...

Gender-specific determinants of remittances are the subject of this study based on German SOEP data (2001-2006). In 2007, about 7.3 million foreigners were living in Germany. While the total number of foreigners has decreased over the last decade, female migration to Germany has increased....

The aim of this paper is to investigate the hypothesis that after leaving the educational system, labour market integration has a causal effect on first-birth decisions. The analysis focuses on two major research questions: First, how is the timing of first parenthood associated with previous...

We use newly available data from Germany to study the relationship between parental income and child health. We find a strong gradient between parental income and subjective child health as has been documented earlier in the US, Canada and the UK. The relationship in Germany is about as strong...