The 10 most recently published documents
Sweden and West Germany have had persistently high divorce rates in recent decades, but these two welfare states were differently equipped to mitigate the economic consequences of divorce for individual security in old age: Sweden followed a gender-equal policy approach to enable women and men to achieve economic autonomy, while West Germany, following the male-breadwinner model, introduced the system of ‘divorce-splitting’ to account for differences in women's and men's income. Against this background, this study uses large-scale register data from the German Public Pension Fund and the Swedish population registers to examine how divorce is related to the monthly public old-age pension income of women and men. The main comparison groups are divorced and (re)married individuals who entered retirement between 2013 and 2018. We descriptively show annual income histories from ages 20 to 65, and calculate monthly public old-age pension income with respect to lifetime income and pension regulations, such as the supplements/deductions for ‘divorce-splitting’. Multiple ordinary least square regression models further examine how family status relates to monthly public old-age pension income by gender. The results reveal that women and men in Sweden experience similar working histories, although women's incomes are lower. This is also reflected in women still having lower pension incomes than men. However, divorced and married women show comparable pension incomes, while divorced men receive approximately 26 per cent less pension income than married men. In West Germany, divorced women have significantly higher pension incomes than married women. The system of ‘divorce-splitting’ increases women's and decreases men's pension incomes, which seems to equalise their pension incomes. However, both stay below a married man's pension income. The findings indicate economic inequality in public old-age pension income by family status in Sweden and West Germany.
Tracing Transparency: Public Governance of Algorithms and the Experience of Contact Tracing Apps
(2022)
Based on a seminar organized by LIEPP and CIVICA which took place at Sciences Po in June 2022, this publication brings together ten academic researchers from seven different CIVICA universities (Bocconi, CEU, EUI, Hertie School, LSE, Sciences Po, SNSPA), who are involved in various forms of policy evaluation. These contributions from Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and the United Kingdom, reflect on the assets and challenges of developing policy evaluation in an academic setting. The seminar was organized as part of CIVICA’s research focus on “Democracy in the 21st century”, but through the crosscutting nature of program evaluation, it is also of interest to CIVICA’s three others research streams (on societies in transition, data, and Europe revisited). The aim of this debate is thus to better understand the specificities, assets and challenges of developing evaluation from within an academic setting, in view of eventually reflecting on possible ways to collectively reinforce this practice within CIVICA, and use CIVICA as a leverage to reinforce this practice. This debate is organized around two topics, developing academic evaluative research, and the role of academic institutions in outreach and training in evaluation. Contributions are based on presentations of the experiences of each CIVICA partner.
This cumulative dissertation examines how couples with children in Germany divide paid and unpaid work and identifies several factors related to a more egalitarian division of labor. In the first paper, I focus on the division of paid work in couples with children, comparing female same-sex and different-sex couples, which constitutes an empirical novelty. Discussing the applicability of division of labor theories to same-sex couples, I further exploit the historically shaped gender culture of East and West Germany. Based on the German Microcensus (2010-2019) and using pooled OLS regressions, I show that female same-sex couples divide paid work more equally than different-sex couples. Comparing East and West Germany, I find a similarly equal division of paid work among same-sex and different-sex couples in the East, while different-sex couples in the West specialize more. The analysis highlights the importance of the cultural context and normative explanations of the division of labor.
The second paper turns to childcare, the intersection of the paid working life with the father’s contribution to childcare being a key concern of researchers and policymakers. The COVID-19 pandemic and the short-time work scheme provided a “natural experiment” for investigating this nexus. Based on IAB-HOPP data and multinomial logistic regressions, we show that fathers in short-time work take over more care responsibilities than fathers continuously employed with regular working 1 hours. The findings indicate that policies targeting men’s working hours can affect the gendered distribution of childcare within couples.
The third paper focuses on the methodological problem of analyzing the division of unpaid work in couples often from one partner’s perspective only. Therefore, I examine the determinants of ‘perception gaps’ (defined as the mismatches between partners’ responses). Based on pairfam data, I analyze respondents’ reports on housework and childcare during the transition to first parenthood and show that a substantial perception gap exists, with 30% regarding housework and 25% concerning childcare. Results of the logistic regressions indicate that perception gaps are lowest among couples where the woman is employed or highly educated. These findings clearly underline the importance of a dyadic perspective on the division of labor in couples.
Grand Challenge Initiatives in AI for Climate & Nature: Landscape Assessment and Recommendations
(2024)
Bürger:innenprognosen in einem Mischwahlsystem: Die deutsche Bundestagswahl 2021 als Testfall
(2024)
Wie viele Wahlkreise gewinnt welche Partei bei der Bundestagswahl? Diese Frage war im Vorfeld der Bundestagswahl 2021 trotz des deutschen Mischwahlsystems unter Fachleuten wie auch einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit von besonderem Interesse. Diesem Bedarf an Vorhersagen bedient in jüngerer Zeit eine zunehmende Zahl von Prognosemodellen, die sich jedoch fast ausschließlich auf die Zweitstimme abzielen. Für Wahlkreise gibt es nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern auch in reinen Mehrheitswahlsystemen, kaum relevante Umfragen. Wir führten daher eine Wahlerwartungsumfrage durch, um den Wahlausgang in jedem einzelnen Bundestagswahlkreis zu prognostizieren. Wir nennen unseren Ansatz Bürger:innenprognose, weil er auf den Erwartungen der Bürger:innen über das Wahlverhalten ihrer Mitbürger:innen beruht und nicht auf deren selbstberichteten Wahlabsichten. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir unsere Bürger:innenprognose vor, evaluieren ihre Genauigkeit und vergleichen sie mit anderen Ansätzen zur Wahlprognose.