Subjective well-being (SWB) is generally argued to rise with relative income. However, direct evidence is scarce on whether and how intensively individuals undertake income comparisons, to whom they relate, and what they perceive their relative income to be. In this paper, novel data with direct...

This paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross-sectional earnings inequality in Germany over the past three decades, while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices. Using rich micro data, the observed distribution of couples' earnings is compared to a counterfactual...

A growing polarization of society accompanied with an erosion of the middle class experiences more and more attention at least in the German recent economic and social policy discussion. Our study contributes to the polarization discussion with respect to multidimensional theoretical measurement...

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...

Based on nationally representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) we analyze the intergenerational transmission of economic and social (dis-)advantages in Germany, the United States and...

In Germany, inequality of net equivalized income increased noticeably in the first half of the new millennium. We aim to identify the main drivers of this rise in income inequality since the early 1990s. We provide a broad overview of the circumstances under which inequality evolved, i.e. which...

We survey the literature on income mobility, aiming to provide an integrated discussion of mobility within- and between-generations. We review mobility concepts, descriptive devices, measurement methods, data sources, and recent empirical evidence.

The present study calculates variable, cross-sectional as well as longitudinal equivalence scales on the basis of the German 1984-2010 Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) database for West Germany. It follows the individual variant for calculating subjective equivalence scales using life satisfaction as...

Die Ungleichheit der Einkommensverteilung hat nicht zuletzt deshalb stark zugenommen, weil die Bezieher von Spitzeneinkommen überproportional hohe Einkommenszuwächse erzielten. Vor allem der mittlerweile immense Abstand der Gehälter von Topmanagern zu den von Normalverdienern wird in...

Shifting taxes from labor income to consumption is regularly suggested as a measure to induce work incentives. We investigate the effect of increases in the Value Added Tax on labor supply and the income distribution in Germany, which is compensated by a revenue-neutral reduction in...