Utilizing subjective data to infer on fundamental issues of individual opinion is associated with severe conceptual and methodological problems.This paper addresses these problems and investigates the attitudes towards immigrants within a cross-country framework. To this end, we utilize data...

Intensified European integration, enlargement of the EU, and increasing migration activity worldwide have pushed migration and migration policy to the forefront of the European agenda. While many observers hesitate to embrace immigration emanating from outside Europe, sectoral skill shortages...

Data from 31 countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used to estimate education production functions for reading literacy.The analysis suggests that the probability of finding statistically significant and correctly signed class size effects...

This paper offers a descriptive portrait of income poverty among children in Germany between the early 1980s and 2001, with a focus on developments since unification in 1991. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are used to estimate poverty rates, rates of entry to and exit from poverty,...

This paper analyses the duration of child poverty in Germany. In our sample, we observe the entire income history from the individuals’ birth to their coming of age at age 18.Therefore we are able to analyze dynamics in and out of poverty for the entire population of children, whether they...

The determinants which are decisive for a successful accumulation of human capital and the transfer of these skills into the labor market are a contentious issue in the literature on the economics of education. Different studies on, for instance, the impact of school resources typically reach...

The majority of empirical papers in the literature on school quality finds no or only small effects of class size and other school quality measures on students’ outcomes. This paper analyses the effect of achievement heterogeneity and therefore the effect of the composition rather than the...

This paper investigates whether and to what extent employment policy measures (co-) financed by the European Social Fund in Germany meet their objective. Specifically, it is analyzed whether qualification programs for employed workers in the German state of Saxony were effective in terms of...

Taking a European cross-country perspective, this paper addresses the most important issues in the nexus of population ageing and labor markets.We start from a descriptive overview of the demographic change currently shaping European societies.The subsequent section intensively discusses the...

This paper investigates whether and to what extent immigrants in Germany are integrated into German society by utilizing a variety of qualitative information and subjective data collected in the 1999 wave of the German Socio- Economic Panel (GSOEP).To this end, leisure-time activities and...