Empirical Essays on Inequality

This dissertation consists of four empirical chapters on inequality, with Chapters 1 and 2 focusing on regional inequality, and Chapters 3 and 4 examining the origins of inequality at the individual level. The first chapter makes a methodological contribution to the literature on inequality across regions by providing the fayherriot command for the statistical software Stata. The command implements the Fay-Herriot model (Fay and Herriot, 1979), a small-area estimation technique (Rao and Molina, 2015) that improves the precision of region-level direct estimates using region-level covariates. The command implements the default model and encompasses additional options to a) produce out-of-sample predictions, b) adjust non-positive random effects variance estimates, and c) deal with the violation of model assumptions. An application of the command in the last part of the chapter shows that the statistical precision of regional income estimates can be considerably improved, allowing for a more robust examination of inequality between regions. Similar to the first chapter, the second chapter is concerned with providing improved data for the analysis of regional differences. For this purpose, the chapter presents a novel regional database of tax revenues for the interwar period in Germany. The database contains annual income and payroll, corporate, wealth, and turnover tax revenues for 900 tax districts in the former German Empire over the period 1926 to 1938. Moreover, the database provides geocoded borders for each tax district and year, allowing researchers to flexibly link the tax data to other geocoded data sources. The use of the data is further facilitated by a detailed description of the interwar German tax system in the second part of the chapter. Comparing the tax data with historical regional GDP estimates, the chapter finds high correlations, suggesting that tax data are valid proxy for regional economic development and a useful data source for regional analyses. The third chapter focuses on individual inequality and one of the largest shocks to private wealth in 20th century Germany: the destruction of the housing stock during the Second World War. By the end of the war, an estimated \num{20} percent of the West German housing stock had been destroyed, and the chapter examines the extent to which regional differences in destruction can explain differences in private wealth today. As the empirical basis, the analysis links a unique dataset on the levels of wartime destruction in 1739 West German cities with recent micro data on household wealth provided by the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). The results indicate that wealth is still significantly lower today among individuals born in cities or villages that were badly damaged. Similarly, the destruction of parents’ cities or villages of birth has significant negative effects on the wealth of their descendants. These detrimental effects are robust after controlling for a rich set of pre-war regional and city-level control variables. In a complementary mediation analysis, the chapter studies potential channels such as health, education, and work experience, through which the wartime destruction could have affected wealth accumulation. The fourth chapter investigates wealth inequality between migrants and natives in Germany. In particular, the chapter examines the role of characteristics and behavior for the development of the large wealth gaps between the two groups. Based on data from the SOEP, the results of this chapter show that the native-migrant wealth gap is large and persistent throughout the 2002 to 2017 period. A subsequent decomposition analysis exploits the panel dimension of the data and shows that working-age migrants cannot significantly catch up with natives in terms of net wealth because they lack sufficient levels of income, inheritances, and inter-vivos gifts. The results also indicate that especially native individuals consume, transfer, or lose significant amounts of wealth over time, which reduces the pace at which the wealth inequality between migrants and natives increases.Diese Dissertation setzt sich aus vier empirischen Kapiteln über Ungleichheit zusammen, wobei die Kapitel 1 und 2 regionale Ungleichheiten behandeln, während die Kapitel 3 und 4 Ungleichheit auf individueller Ebene untersuchen. Das erste Kapitel leistet einen methodischen Beitrag zur Literatur über regionale Ungleichheit, indem es den Befehl fayherriot für die Statistiksoftware Stata bereitstellt. Der Befehl implementiert das Fay-Herriot-Modell (Fay and Herriot, 1979), eine Small-Area-Methode (Rao and Molina, 2015), die die Genauigkeit direkter Schätzungen auf regionaler Ebene unter Verwendung von regionaler Kovariate verbessert. Der Befehl implementiert das Standardmodell und umfasst zusätzliche Optionen, um a) Out-of-Sample-Vorhersagen zu treffen, b) nichtpositive Schätzungen der Fehlertermvarianz zu korrigieren und c) mit weiteren Verletzung von Modellannahmen umzugehen. Eine Anwendung des Befehls im letzten Teil des Kapitels zeigt, dass das Fay-Herriot-Modell die statistische Genauigkeit von regionalen Einkommensschätzungen erheblich verbessern kann, was eine robustere Untersuchung der Ungleichheit zwischen Regionen ermöglicht. Ähnlich wie das erste Kapitel hat das zweite Kapitel das Ziel, die Datengrundlage für die Analyse regionaler Unterschiede zu verbessern. Zu diesem Zweck wird in dem Kapitel eine neue regionale Datenbank mit Steuereinnahmen aus der Zwischenkriegszeit in Deutschland bereit- und vorgestellt. Die Datenbank enthält die jährlichen Steuereinnahmen aus der Einkommen- , Körperschaft-, Vermögen- und Umsatzsteuer sowie die des Lohnsteuerabzugs für die rund 900 Finanzämter im ehemaligen Deutschen Reich im Zeitraum von 1926 bis 1938. Darüber hinaus bietet die Datenbank geocodierte Grenzen für jedes Jahr und jeden Finanzamtsbezirk, so dass die Steuerdaten flexibel mit anderen geocodierten Datenquellen verknüpft werden können. Um die Datennutzung weiter zu erleichtern, ist im zweiten Teil des Kapitels eine detaillierte Beschreibung des deutschen Steuersystems der Zwischenkriegszeit enthalten. Beim Vergleich der Steuerdaten mit Schätzungen für das regionale, historische Bruttoinlandsprodukt werden hohe Korrelationen festgestellt, was darauf hindeutet, dass die Steuerdaten ein gültiger Proxy für die regionale Wirtschaftsentwicklung und eine nützliche Datenquelle für regionale Analysen sind. Das dritte Kapitel behandelt Ungleichheiten zwischen Personen und analysiert einen der größten Schocks für das Privatvermögen in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert: die Zerstörung des Wohnungsbestands während des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Bei Kriegsende waren schätzungsweise 20 Prozent des westdeutschen Wohnungsbestands zerstört, und in diesem Kapitel wird untersucht, inwieweit regionale Unterschiede bei der Zerstörung Unterschiede im heutigen Privatvermögen erklären können. Als empirische Grundlage verknüpft die Analyse einen detaillierten Datensatz über das Ausmaß der Kriegszerstörungen in 1739 westdeutschen Städten mit aktuellen Mikrodaten zum Vermögen privater Haushalte aus dem Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass das Vermögen von Personen, die in stark zerstörten Städten oder Dörfern geboren wurden, auch heute noch deutlich geringer ist. Ebenso hat die Zerstörung der Geburtsorte der Eltern signifikante negative Auswirkungen auf das heutige Vermögen ihrer Nachkommen. Die geschätzten Effekte sind robust auch nachdem für eine Reihe von Variablen auf regionaler und städtischer Ebene aus der Vorkriegszeit kontrolliert wird. In einer ergänzenden Mediationsanalyse werden in diesem Kapitel mögliche Wirkungskanäle wie Gesundheit, Bildung und Berufserfahrung untersucht, über die die Kriegszerstörung die Vermögensbildung beeinflusst haben könnte. Das vierte Kapitel untersucht die Vermögensungleichheit zwischen Zugewanderten und Einheimischen in Deutschland. Insbesondere untersucht das Kapitel die Bedeutung von Merkmalsunterschieden für die Entwicklung der Vermögensunterschiede zwischen den beiden Gruppen. Auf Grundlage von Daten des SOEP zeigen die Ergebnisse dieses Kapitels, dass das Vermögensgefälle zwischen Einheimischen und Zugewanderten sehr groß und über den gesamten Analysezeitraum von 2002 bis 2017 relativ stabil ist. Eine anschließende Dekompositionsanalyse nutzt die Paneldimension der Daten aus und zeigt, dass Zugewanderte im erwerbsfähigen Alter hinsichtlich des Nettovermögens über die Zeit nicht wesentlich zur einheimischen Bevölkerung aufschließen können, da sie nicht über das ausreichende Einkommen verfügen und nicht im gleichen Maße von Erbschaften oder Schenkungen profitieren. Die Ergebnisse deuten außerdem darauf hin, dass vor allem einheimische Personen im Laufe der Zeit signifikante Teile ihres Vermögens aufzehren, übertragen oder verlieren, wodurch sich die Geschwindigkeit verringert, mit der die Vermögensungleichheit zwischen Zugewanderten und Einheimischen zunimmt

Regional health inequalities in Germany: a spatial and temporal perspective of individual and contextual factors of health

The major outcome of this thesis is the detection and identification of profound spatial inequalities. These inequalities differ by the level of spatial aggregation, the selected health indicator, the birth cohort, but only partly by sex. The inequalities are exposed by using established population health measures which depict disparities in an absolute (prevalence, life years with and without care need), relative (Health ratio, Odds ratio, Risk ratio), or theory-driven perspective (health scenarios).Hauptergebnis der Dissertation ist das Aufdecken von ausgeprägten räumlichen Ungleichheiten. Diese Ungleichheiten unterscheiden sich nach dem Niveau der territorialen Aggregation, den ausgewählten Gesundheitsindikatoren, der Geburtskohorte, jedoch nur gering zwischen den Geschlechtern. Die Ungleichheiten wurden aufgedeckt, da etablierte Methoden und Maßzahlen verwendet wurden, die Ungleichheiten sowohl in absoluter (Prävalenz, Lebenszeit mit/ohne Pflegebedarf), in relativer (Health ratio, Odds Ratio, Risk Ratio) als auch in theoriebasierter Perspektive (Gesundheitsszenarien) abbilden können

Papers of the symposium

Urbanization is one of the global processes in a sense that it takes place all over the world, and also in a sense that it influences the whole society, modifying its structure. The globality of its presence is not against the fact but requires it that in all concrete regions of the world, and in all concrete groups of society it can be characterized with specific features. Because of the significance of the process, its global characteristics, its way of appearance, which are characteristic of the place and the social group, the process of urbanization is studied from several sides of science and in a way endeavouring for complex approach. The target region of the urbanization process stands in the center of researches, similarly to the other aspect when the researchers investigate the social side, i.e. in what classes the benefits of the rearrangement can be experienced and what structural changes it causes there. Taken altogether, during the urbanizational researches those territories are left untouched which were left out from the urbanization or connected to it only as scenes of emigration, and those social groups are also left in darkness which are not - or negatively - influenced by the urbanizational processes. However, it is doubtless that the complete revelation of urbanization process needs a thorough investigation of both aspects. Geographers have experienced the above contradiction for decades, therefore the International Geographic Union created the working committee on problems of rural areas several years ago. It was partly the results of this committee and partly the comprehensive knowledge of the problems occurring in the region, that lead prof. Andrzej Stasziak to initiate an international research on the rural territories of East-Central Europe, especially to reveal the kinds of migrations in the region. He established the flexible, but to a certain extent necessary institutional background as well, by creating a smaller research team within the Geographic and Region-Organizational Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and took upon the task of organization. Annually he ensures possibility or initiate a meeting for the researchers of East-Central Europe involved in this theme. The first two meetings took place in Poland, they both turned out to be successful, and the lectures were published. The initiation and the series of programmes achieved reasonable international reaction. The researchers dealing with the rural areas of East-Central Europe met first out of Poland in 1992. The international conference was held in Pécs and Kecskemét, Hungary between June 1 -6 , 1992. The conference was organized by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Center for Regional Studies (Pécs) and Scientific Institute of the Great Hungarian Plain, resident in Kecskemét. The Regional- and Settlement Developmental Committee of the Pécs Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences joined the organizational works as well as other local governments. Taking it into consideration that the political changes taken place in East-Central Europe modified the relationship and inner structure of the region in a significant extent, furthermore that the first consequences and the results were measurable the main theme of the conference was evident; ’The Impact of Eastern European Changes on Rural Areas’. More than twenty lectures were held by researchers coming from the region undergoing a significant transformation from political geographical point of view; i.e. the European bordering states have left the former Soviet Union, the possible mobility of the former socialist countries, has increased, the disintegration of Yugoslavia has begun and there were obvious signs of disuniting of Czechoslovakia which is reality at present. Austria joined the activity of the sessions for the first time, represented by professor Walter Zsilincsar, who held an interesting lecture and took a considerably active part in the debates following the other lectures, confronting the other experts’ prognoses and notions with the Austrian reality. The Hungarian delegation, using the advantages of the ,,home field” , consisted of more members than usual. Among the delegates we can find, among others, experts from Pécs, Kecskemét, Debrecen, Szeged, Szombathely and Budapest. It is noticeable that besides geographers, who naturally formed the majority, sociologists, economists and historians were present in the home delegation. The versatility, created from both home and foreign aspect, made the debates exceedingly interesting. The conference was accompanied by field trips. The first of them touched those Baranya county areas (Hosszúhetény and its environments), where the creation of the criteria of agri-tourism can be an important element of the survival strategy in the rural areas. The participants of the conference could directly get acquainted with house owners, who rearranged their houses according to the criteria of agritourism, thus made them capable of receiving guests. Talking to the owners could mean the opportunity of collecting first-hand experiences for the experts. The second field trip started from Kecskemét, and aimed at getting familiar with the economic and settlement system of the scattered farms formed on the sandy areas between the Danube and the Tisa, especially known for their vine and fruit cultures, and at the practical enumerating of the ways of development of the scattered farms. Besides this the participants visited the Kiskunság National Park, having a farewell-dinner and signing the declaration stated earlier. This declaration, that was signed by each participants of the conference and that we published, and that each delegation delivered through their channels to the representatives of the decision sphere of the given country, draws the attention to the fact that the privatization taking place in the region, besides being just by all means and historically necessary, disturbs the formed and functioning system of connections of the rural areas, thus may be the source of many a problem. It requires more support to the rural areas, draws the attention to the necessity of the right choice in the new ways of development and to the fact that though the ecological state of the rural areas is better than the similar indexes of several industrial zones, the danger is increasing in these areas, too. It is just the Hungarian experiences that underline the necessity of taking care of the ecological balance, the relatively favourable position of the rural areas for strategic reasons (e.g. the possibility of agri-tourism). Only a minor part of the lectures dealt with the processes concerning the whole of the region, while most of them were dealing with the whole of the countries, or at the level of case studies, with certain regions. The most important conclusion of the considerably active debates might be that in the given countries the changes amount to the same consequences within the same circumstances, and this similarity does underline the necessity of the debate of the experts dealing with the rural areas of the region. There is a great opportunity to take over experiences despite the fact that besides the fundamental similarity, specific features of a country or region motivate the processes, too. The support of the Research Centre for Regional Studies of HAS and a few research projects (the Great Plain programme, different OTKA1 subjects) made it possible for us to edit the subjects of the conference and to enable the international professional public opinion to judge it. Now that we offer the completed volume to the reader, at the same time we thank for the participation of the foreign colleagues, the cooperation of the home experts and the help of all those who had any sacrifice in organizing the conference, the implementation of the field trips or in the creation of the book. Pécs—Kecskemét, 01.12 .1992

Designing One Nation

"This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations, thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as part of The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot.The histories of East and West Germany traditionally emphasize the Cold War rivalries between the communist and capitalist nations. Yet, even as the countries diverged in their political directions, they had to create new ways of working together economically. In Designing One Nation, Katrin Schreiter examines the material culture of increasing economic contacts in divided Germany from the 1940s until the 1990s. Trade events, such as fairs and product shows, became one of the few venues for sustained links and knowledge between the two countries after the building of the Berlin Wall. Schreiter uses industrial design, epitomized by the furniture industry, to show how a network of politicians, entrepreneurs, and cultural brokers attempted to nationally re-inscribe their production cultures, define a postwar German identity, and regain economic stability and political influence in postwar Europe. What started as a competition for ideological superiority between East and West Germany quickly turned into a shared, politically legitimizing quest for an untainted post-fascist modernity. This work follows products from the drawing board into the homes of ordinary Germans to offer insights into how converging visions of German industrial modernity created shared expectations about economic progress and living standards. Schreiter reveals how intra-German and European trade policies drove the creation of products and generated a certain convergence of East and West German taste by the 1980s. Drawing on a wide range of sources from governments, furniture firms, industrial design councils, home lifestyle magazines, and design exhibitions, Designing One Nation argues that an economic culture linked the two Germanies even before reunification in 1990.

Great Policy Successes

"With so much media and political criticism of their shortcomings and failures, it is easy to overlook the fact that many governments work pretty well much of the time. Great Policy Successes turns the spotlight on instances of public policy that are remarkably successful. It develops a framework for identifying and assessing policy successes, paying attention not just to their programmatic outcomes but also to the quality of the processes by which policies are designed and delivered, the level of support and legitimacy they attain, and the extent to which successful performance endures over time. The bulk of the book is then devoted to 15 detailed case studies of striking policy successes from around the world, including Singapore's public health system, Copenhagen and Melbourne's rise from stilted backwaters to the highly liveable and dynamic urban centres they are today, Brazil's Bolsa Familia poverty relief scheme, the US's GI Bill, and Germany's breakthrough labour market reforms of the 2000s. Each case is set in context, its main actors are introduced, key events and decisions are described, the assessment framework is applied to gauge the nature and level of its success, key contributing factors to success are identified, and potential lessons and future challenges are identified. Purposefully avoiding the kind of heavy theorizing that characterizes many accounts of public policy processes, each case is written in an accessible and narrative style ideally suited for classroom use in conjunction with mainstream textbooks on public policy design, implementation, and evaluation