Die Unterschiede zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland sind auch noch 30 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall ein Thema, das sich vor allem populistische Parteien zunutze machen. Wie groß sind die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Disparitäten in Deutschland wirklich? Ist der Aufholprozess ins Stocken geraten?...

Judith Niehues und Maximilian Stockhausen, Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft, Köln, weisen darauf hin, dass in der Wahrnehmung der Bevölkerungsmehrheit die Ungleichheit in Einkommen und Vermögen seit Jahren steigt. Ein Abgleich mit den verfügbaren Daten zeige jedoch, dass die Daten weder ein...

Two conversion schemes are usually employed for assessing personal-income inequality from household equivalent incomes: to weight household units by size or by needs.Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we show the sensitivity of country inequality rankings to conversion schemes and...

Standard household economics assumes that couples pool their incomes and share the sum equally, which is a necessary prerequisite for computing equivalent incomes and hence all statements about the distribution of personal incomes and income poverty. However, since cohabitation without marriage...

Society drifts apart in many dimensions. Economists focus on income of the poor and rich and the distribution of income but a broader spectrum of dimensions is required to draw the picture of multiple facets of individual life. In our study of multidimensional polarization we extend the income...

The distribution of personal income in a society depends strongly on the within-household distribution of income. Nevertheless, little is known about this phenomenon. I analyze the sharing of income among household partners from a welfare economic perspective. Measures of financial satisfaction...

Using representative income and time use-data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we estimate non-monetary income advantages arising from home production and analyse their impact on economic inequality. As an alternative to existing measures, we propose a predicted wage approach based...

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...

Regionale Divergenzen gewinnen in der öffentlichen Debatte zunehmend an Bedeutung, und Forderungen nach politischen Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung regionaler Unterschiede mehren sich. Für die Ausgestaltung solcher Maßnahmen ist es wichtig, die Art der Divergenzen richtig zu erfassen. Eine Analyse...

In view of rising wage and income inequality, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of a nationwide legal minimum wage of 7.50 € per hour on the basis of a microsimulation model which accounts...