Suchergebnisse

We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the years before 2005/2006, this trend was stopped after 2005/2006. Among many other factors, we consider the role of the employment boom and the development of inequality in wage incomes after 2005/2006. Our results suggest that, despite further increases in wage inequality, inequality in equivalized net incomes did not increase further after 2005/2006 because increased within-year employment opportunities compensated otherwise rising inequality in annual labour incomes. On the other hand, income inequality did not fall in a more marked way after 2005/2006 because also the middle and the upper part of the distribution benefitted from the employment boom. Other factors, such as changing household structures, population aging and changes in the tax and transfer system had no important effects on the distribution. Finally, we find little evidence that the distribution of equivalized net incomes was affected in any important way by the financial crisis and the subsequent great recession.

AbstractBased on data from the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), we revisit the question of how differences in household characteristics can account for cross-country differences in wealth inequality. We first show that commonly used RIF-decompositions are typically tested positive for specification error due to the large differences in household characteristics between countries. We then present an alternative analysis for which we introduce a convenient graphical representation of the wealth distribution. Our results show that not only differences in wealth inequality but also differences in distributional shape can be largely accounted for by differences in homeownership across countries, but that, for some country comparisons, differences in household incomes also matter.

This study revisits the increase in wage inequality in Germany. Accounting for changes in various sets of observables, composition changes explain a large part of the increase in wage inequality among full-time workers. The composition effects are larger for females than for males, and increasingly heterogenous labor market histories play an important role. Furthermore, we find strong effects of education for males and strong effects of age and experience for females. Changes in industry and occupation explain fairly little. Extending the analysis to total employment confirms the basic findings, while revealing substantial negative selection into part-time work.