Social scientists and media commentators have expressed concern that Western countries are becoming two-thirds societies in which two-thirds enjoy the benefits of affluence, while one-third are locked into poverty or near-poverty. This paper, based on economic panel data, tests the two-thirds...

What has happened to incomes, inequality and satisfaction with living standards in the first stage of transition from a communist command economy to a market economy in East Germany? This paper tests six hypotheses about the transition to capitalism. Contrary to expectations, real incomes went...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (N=6950), this paper analyses equivalent income mobility in West Germany, 1984-93. Four hypotheses, derived from recent North American research and from sociological theory (stratification theory) are tested. They are: 1. that in West Germany, as...

Im Januar des Jahres 2008 begann die Feldarbeit der 25. Welle des SOEP. Im Jahr 2009 werden damit etwa 2 500 anonymisierte Datensätze von Personen zur Auswertung zur Verfügung stehen, die seit 1984 ununterbrochen an 25 Befragungen in den westdeutschen SOEP-Teilstichproben A und B teilgenommen...

What has happened to incomes, inequality and satisfaction with living standards in the first stage of transition from a communist command economy to a market economy in East Germany? This paper tests six hypotheses about the transition to capitalism. Contrary to expectations, real incomes went...