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In this paper we propose an aggregate measure of income inequality for the founding countries of the European Monetary Union. Applying the methodology of the Theil index we are able to derive a measure for Euroland as a whole by using complementary data from the European Community Household Panel and the Luxembourg Income Study. The property of additive decomposability allows us to determine each country's contribution as well as that of each demographic group to overall income inequality. In addition the impact of government transfers on this inequality measure is assessed.

We suggest a methodology to calibrate a collective model with household specific bargaining rules and marriage specific preferences that incorporate leisure exter nalities. The empirical identification relies on the assumption that some aspects of indi vidual preferences remain the same after marriage, so that estimation on single individuals can be used. The procedure maps the complete Pareto frontier of each household in the dataset and we define alternative measures of a power index. The latter is then regressed on relevant bargaining factors, including a set of variables retracing the potential relative contributions of the spouses to household disposable income. In its capacity to handle complex budget sets and labor force participation decisions of both spouses, this frame work allows the comparison of unitary and collective predictions of labor supply reactions and welfare changes entailed by fiscal reforms in a realistic setting (see Michal Myck et al., 2006; Denis Beninger et al., 2006).

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Discontinuities in the employment profile are supposed to cause wage cuts since they imply an interruption in the accumulation of human capital as well as a depreciation of the human capital stock built up in the past. In this paper, we estimate the return to effective experience, taking into account both the timing and the duration of non-work and part-time employment spells. Estimation results for German women suggest that deviations from full-time employment are associated with significant wage cuts owing to the depreciation of human capital. Postponing the discontinuity leads to a further fall of the wage rate. Controlling for individual heterogeneity with respect to industry sector and job position decreases the estimated depreciation rates. This we interpret as an indication for segregation in the labor market. We conclude that traditional wage estimations that do not control for depreciation underestimate the return to effective experience.

The aim of this paper is to identify the sources of time use differences between married and cohabiting couples and to answer the question whether there is a "selection into specialization", i.e. whether cohabiting partners who agree on a (traditional) division of work simply have a higher probability of getting married. In a non-parametric matching approach, we compare couples who get married in the German SocioEconomic Panel between 1991 and 2008 with couples who remain cohabiters. Taking the potential selection into marriage into account, differences in the intra-couple division of market work and child care are considerably reduced by 54 to 66 percent. Thus, couples who anticipate specialization in time use (and its corresponding economic advantages) seem to pre-select into formal marriage. However, remaining differences in time use leave sufficient scope for an additional specializationreinforcing effect of the institutional framework of marriage in Germany, particularly for the subsample of couples who become parents.

This contribution investigates sickness absences of German men and women from a longitudinal perspective. The article tests hypotheses on household context and paid working conditions as determinants for men's and women's absences from employment. The empirical analysis is based on selected waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) between 1985 and 2001. The results of ordered probit estimations confirm that women's and men's sickness absences were related to both working conditions and household context. The findings thus indicate the potential empirical relevance of the ''double burden'' for German women and men. The stereotype of higher absences of women due to family obligations does not seem to fully represent the actual behavior of German employees, at least for the 1985-2001 period. However, the relative importance of specific working conditions and the relative importance of household structure versus amount of time spent in household production differed between men and women.

This article investigates domestic sphere investments, that is, housework and childcare time, of spouses in two consecutive relationships and aims to identify potential sources of variation. Economic reasoning would predict a learning effect from one partnership to the next, and hence less specialization in the domestic sphere in the second relationship. Prevailing gender norms or institutions, on the contrary, may prevent such adjustments in the division of housework. In a fixed-effects regression analysis with the German Socio-Economic Panel, we compare time allocations of couples whose members experienced two consecutive partnerships from 1991 to 2012. Our results indicate that women’s and men’s successive matches differ from each other. Women and their new partners tend to reallocate time from housework to childcare while men’s individual domestic investment patterns remain similar across unions. Highly educated women conform most to the economic rationale by reducing their marital investments significantly in their next partnership.