The percentage of children attending private school in Germany has increased sharply in recent years. According to data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), 7% of all students now attend private school. The SOEP, which contains a range of household data, shows that the children of parents...

Income poverty in Germany has reached its highest level for twenty years. This statistic is often seen as proof of the existence and growth of a 'decoupled underclass'. In other scenarios large sections of society appear to be facing collapse into poverty. If the duration of individual phases of...

The proportion of middle income earners in Germany has shrunk significantly in recent years: from 62 percent of the total population in the year 2000 to only 54 percent in 2006. Correspondingly, the proportion of the population at the margins of the income distribution has increased as well,...

Individual net wealth in Germany totaled an average of around 88,000 Euros at the beginning of 2007 which was about 10 percent higher than in 2002. Decisive for this development was an increase in monetary wealth as well as wealth from private insurance. In connection with the overall quite...

Entitlements from old-age pension schemes - statutory, company, and private - represent a considerable source of wealth. For data-related reasons, analyses of the personal wealth distribution have so far failed to take this into account, however. According to recent calculations based on the...