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...

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...

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht auf Basis von Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels für Deutschland (SOEP), inwieweit selbständige Ausländer in Deutschland überdurchschnittlich hohe Einkommen erzielen. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass ausländische Selbständige insgesamt höhere Einkommen...

While most studies on wealth inequality focus on the inequality between households, this paper examines the distribution of wealth within couples. For this purpose, we make use of unique individual level micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). In married and cohabiting couples,...

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht auf Basis von Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels für Deutschland (SOEP), inwieweit selbständige Ausländer in Deutschland überdurchschnittlich hohe Einkommen erzielen. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass ausländische Selbständige insgesamt höhere Einkommen...

This study investigates the determinants of women's labor supply in the household context. The main focus is on the effect of a change in male partner's wages on women's work hours. This is linked to the broader question of whether married and cohabiting women make different economic decisions...

This paper examines the added worker effect (AWE), which refers to the increase of labor supply of individuals in response to a sudden financial shock in family income, that is, unemployment of their partner. While previous empirical studies focus on married women's response to those shocks, I...

From an economic perspective, marriage and long-term partnership can be seen as a risk-pooling device. This informal insurance contract is, however, not fully enforceable. Each partner is free to leave when his or her support is needed in case of an adverse life event. An adverse health shock is...

We evaluate the effects of the transition from cohabitation to marriage on household domestic and market work hours using a sample of working couples. For this purpose we use the 21 first waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSEOP). We adapt the estimator introduced by Semykina and...

This paper asks whether the gap in subjective happiness between spouses matters per se, i.e. whether it predicts divorce. We use three panel databases to explore this question. Controlling for the level of life satisfaction of spouses, we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first...