Financial Consequences of COVID-19 in Germany: Living Standards of Older People During the First Year of the Pandemic.

Despite major restrictions on economic activity due to the first lockdown starting in March 2020, public financial support helped to limit the financial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. However, certain groups were more affected than others. Most significantly, people in the lowest income quintile were more affected than those who had higher levels of income prior to the pandemic.

Mobility restriction and barrier-reduced housing among people aged 65 or older in Germany: Do those who need it live in barrier-reduced residences?

Introduction: Older people spend a lot of time at home and in the area near where they live. Housing conditions ensure their ability to participate in social life, especially when they suffer from mobility restrictions. Barrier-free access to the residence and to rooms within the residence is a key condition for their everyday mobility.

Gender differences in the determinants of mature entrepreneurship? The case of Germany.

Mature female entrepreneurs represent a non-traditional model of self-employed workers in both ways: in terms of gender age. The transition into self-employment for women aged 45 years and older represents a topic of aging research that still tends to be overlooked. Previous studies found ambivalent results for the issue regarding motives and entrepreneurial pathways between former employmen or unemployment-and starting one's own business and the ways in which these entrepreneurial activities are shaped by social differences (such as gender) and biographically accumulated resources and restrictions.

[What Happens After Childbirth? Changes in Partners' Employment Patterns Three Years After the Transition to Parenthood].

For many couples, the transition to parenthood also marks a transition to gender-specific employment arrangements. However, decisions about employment arrangements after the birth of the first child can be critical for future employment patterns and old-age provision. This article focuses on two questions: first, whether after the transition to parenthood there is a convergence in the employment patterns of younger parental couples born in the 1980s compared with birth cohorts born in the 1970s, and second, whether a division of labour before the transition to parenthood plays an increasing role in employment arrangements afterwards.

Partnered women's contribution to household labor income: Persistent inequalities among couples and their determinants.

This paper explores earnings inequalities within dual-earner couples in East and West Germany drawing on household-level panel data from 1992 to 2016. It has three aims: (1) to analyze how the partner pay gap (the pay gap between partners within one household) has developed over time, given institutional change, and whether the extent of inequality and temporal development vary between East and West Germany; (2) to explore variation in the partner pay gap by male partners' absolute earnings; and (3) to investigate the micro-level determinants of earnings inequalities within couples and determine whether their relevance varies between East and West Germany as well as by male partners' absolute earnings. We find women earn substantially less than their partners, and our regression results find no indication of a declining partner pay gap.

Gender, age and migration: an intersectional approach to inequalities in the labour market.

This paper analyses the interference of three socio-demographic characteristics: gender, age and migration status on the labour market outcomes from the perspective of intersectionality theory. Concretely, we investigate whether gender and migration differences in hourly wages are observable at younger ages and whether these differences increase with age. Further, we analyse whether gender and migration interact in such a way that women with migration background suffer lower wage growth in relation to their counterparts.

Creating employment or keeping them busy? An evaluation of training programs for older workers in Germany.

The authors analyze the effect of participation in short-term training measures on older German recipients of means-tested unemployment benefits. Their analysis uses administrative data of the German Federal Employment Agency, and they estimate the effects of participating in two types of short-term training--classroom and in-firm training--on different outcomes of the participants. Results show that classroom training is not effective in making participants independent of benefit receipt.

Welfare states and quality of later life: distributions and predictions in a comparative perspective.

Demographic transitions are a driver of social change and societal ageing influences the resources and chances in life of different age groups. As a contribution to the debate on (potential) results of the transformation of social security in ageing societies, the impact of social security systems on distributions of quality of life in later life is discussed. Quality of life is introduced as a helpful concept to answer the paper's research questions: How are levels of quality of life in later life and the variability of objective and subjective quality of life indicators related to welfare state arrangements? What is the relevance of social structure indicators for this variability, how is it related to old age security, and what can be learned for the perspectives of current debates on equity and social security reforms? In a comparative perspective employing Esping-Andersen's welfare regime typology, three basic hypotheses are thoroughly tested: the 'hypothesis of (relative) levels', the 'distribution hypothesis' and the 'social structure hypothesis'.