This paper uses a large survey (SOEP) to update and deepen our knowledge about the labor market performance of immigrants in Germany. It documents that immigrant workers initially earn on average 20 percent less than native workers with otherwise identical characteristics. The gap is smaller for...

Extending working life is an objective for many nations. However, the UK government has recently reported only modest improvement "compared to many nations". A comparison of European, Labour Force Surveys show that Germany has reversed early retirement much faster than the UK since 2003. This...

This paper gives an overview of the transformation of the German labor market since the mid-1990s with a special focus on the changing patterns of labor market segmentation or dualization of employment in Germany. While labor market duality in Germany can partially be attributed to labor market...

We study the labor supply effects of a change in child-subsidy policy designed to both increase fertility and shorten birth-related employment interruptions. The reform yields most of the intended effects.

While there is little doubt that the probability of poor health increases with age, and that less healthy people face a more difficult situation on the labour market, the precise relationship between facing the risks of health deterioration and labour market instability is not well understood....

Different empirical studies suggest that the structure of employment in the U.S. and Great Britain tends to polarise into "good" and "bad" jobs. We provide updated evidence that polarisation also occurred in Germany since the mid-1980s until 2008. Using representative panel data, we show that...

In Sen's Capability Approach (CA) well-being can be defined as the freedom of choice to achieve the things in life which one has reason to value most for his or her personal life. Capabilities are in Sen's vocabulary therefore the real freedoms people have or the opportunities available to them....

Little is known about the individual location behaviour of self-employed entrepreneurs. This paper investigates the geographical mobility behaviour of self-employed entrepreneurs, as compared to employees, thereby shedding new light onto the place embeddedness of self-employment. It examines...

The issue of whether employees who work more hours than they want to suffer adverse health consequences is important not only at the individual level but also for governmental formation of work time policy. Our study investigates this question by analyzing the impact of the discrepancy between...

We study the short, medium, and longer run employment effects of a substantial change in the parental leave benefit program in Germany. In 2007, a means-tested parental leave transfer program that had paid benefits for up to two years was replaced by an earnings related transfer which paid...