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,...

The average height of children is an indicator for the quality of nutrition and health care. Heights have never declined over longer time spans in Eastern Germany since 1880 - except for the most recent period 1997-2006. In the Eastern German Land of Brandenburg, a data set of 253,050 pre-school...

Effective states rely on cooperative citizens. To foster reciprocity among citizens and the state, I argue, social policy can be key. Using administrative data on civilian bureaucrats in former East Germany, I show that women giving birth after introduction of extended maternity leave saw a...

Overeducation is an often overlooked facet of untapped human resources. But who is overeducated and why? Relying on SOEP data 1984-2011, we use probit models for estimating the likelihood of entering overeducation and dynamic mixed multinomial logit models with random effects addressing state...

Overeducation is an often overlooked facet of untapped human resources. But who is overeducated and why? Relying on SOEP data 1984 - 2011, we use probit models for estimating the likelihood of entering overeducation and dynamic mixed multinomial logit models with random effects addressing state...

This paper studies whether the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy offers new perspectives for those who, in economic terms, were relatively deprived under the old regime. Previous empirical research on this question has been limited by the availability of representative...