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,...

Atypische Engelkurven-Verläufe zeigen, dass die in der F́aktisch Anonymisierten Lohn- und Einkommenssteuerstatistik 1998 (FAST) verzeichneten steuerrechtlich definierten Einkommensaggregate ein verzerrtes Bild vom Lebensstandard der Zensenten geben. Wir zeigen, dass für einen überwiegenden...

We employ a rich sample of individual tax returns data to simulate alternatives to the income tax reform introduced in Germany by the governmental coalition of Social Democrats and Greens in 1998. We characterize three reforms that would have been fiscally equivalent to the actual one: a...

Income-expenditure surveys typically provide incomes on the household level. As households can differ in size and needs, a reliable assessment of inequality in living standards, therefore, necessitates the conversion of the original heterogeneous into an artificial quasi-homogeneous population....

We employ German Sample Survey Income data to examine income inequality and the financial situation of elderly citizens for the period from 1978 to 2003, focussing on differences between retired and non-retired elderly and between elderly with residence in the Old and the New German Laender....