This paper documents the magnitude, pattern, and evolution of lifetime earnings inequality in Germany. Based on a large sample of earning biographies from social security records, we show that the intra-generational distribution of lifetime earnings of male workers has a Gini coefficient around...

This study uses German social security records to provide novel evidence about the heterogeneity in life expectancy by lifetime earnings and, additionally, documents the distributional implications of this earnings-related heterogeneity. We find a strong association between lifetime earnings and...

Unter Verwendung des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels untersuchen wir, wie sich die Einkommensverteilung für Haushaltsgemeinschaften älterer Personen im Alter von 55 Jahren und älter seit der Wiedervereinigung entwickelt hat. Innerhalb dieser Gruppe unterscheiden wir zwischen...

We study inter-temporal changes in poverty for Germany from year 1978 to 2003, and we employ the bootstrap method to test for statistical significance of results. All results are decomposed by household type and region. Poverty estimates are particularly high for single parents. Most striking,...

Unter Verwendung des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels untersuchen wir, wie sich die Einkommensverteilung für Haushaltsgemeinschaften älterer Personen im Alter von 55 Jahren und älter seit der Wiedervereinigung entwickelt hat. Innerhalb dieser Gruppe unterscheiden wir zwischen...

Income-expenditure surveys typically provide incomes on the household level. As households can differ in size and needs, a reliable assessment of inequality in living standards, therefore, necessitates the conversion of the original heterogeneous into an artificial quasi-homogeneous population....

We employ German Sample Survey Income data to examine income inequality and the financial situation of elderly citizens for the period from 1978 to 2003, focussing on differences between retired and non-retired elderly and between elderly with residence in the Old and the New German Laender....

We employ a rich sample of individual tax returns data to simulate alternatives to the income tax reform introduced in Germany by the governmental coalition of Social Democrats and Greens in 1998. We characterize three reforms that would have been fiscally equivalent to the actual one: a...