Category: News

Yesterday, my WSI colleague Aline Zucco contributed to the Bundestag Commitee “Parlamentarisches Begleitgremium COVID-19-Pandemie” and presented our findings on the rise of social inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Here´s the link to rewatch the full 105 minutes event. You can find our whole statement here. And finally, here´s my Twitter summary thread on the most important findings (in German):

in Böckler IMPULS 06/21: https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-besser-dran-mit-betriebsrat-31892.htm

A new analysis of the strain perceived by the working population in Germany shows very high values for the recent survey wave in January: 40% of the respondents report “high” or “extreme” strain. Even higher is the perceived strain for parents (49%) and especially mothers (54%). Moreover, the study shows how inequal the emotional strain is distributed, as low-income respondents report much higher strain.

The study and the press release can be downloaded here (only German).

A thread with figures and most results summarized can be found here (only German):

Very excited and proud that five years after I discussed an idea of applying Institutional Anomie Theory to Polish society with Jacek Bielinski at the ISA Forum in Vienna, the paper is now published in the European Journal of Criminology!

In the paper we introduce and test new, valid, and reliable micro-level measures of marketized mentality. This thread offers a more comprehensive summary:

The paper can be found here.

For Hans-Böckler-Foundation´s MITBESTIMMUNG-magazine, I reanalyzed the three waves of the work-force panel regarding the prevalence and development of conspiracy myths and corona skepticism/denialism.

Here´s the article (only in German).

Here´s a longer Thread on more results (only in German):

We have analyzed the latest data of the Hans-Böckler-Foundation workforce panel-wave and published some first findings (see press release).

Main results in short:

• worries about health increase in the course of rising COVID-19 cases lately
• worries about eroding social cohesion further increase to very high levels (90%!)
• decrease in agreement to conspiracy myths – though still on a high level.
• lower satisfaction with crisis management of Germany´s Federal administration – especially among respondents with lower income
• Now 40% report loss of income in the course of the pandemic. As in the previous waves, the share is again higher among respondents with lower income.

Here is my German Twitter Thread and my English Tweet on it. Here are first media reports: Sueddeutsche Zeitung, n-tv, and deutschlandfunk.

Today a very comprehensive special edition of WSI-Mitteilungen is available (find the paper online here). It includes many contributions by distinguished colleagues such as Berthold Vogel, Aline Zucco, Malte Lübker, Wolfgang Merkel, Sebastian Dullien, Silke Ötsch, Stephan Lessenich and so many more (find the complete list here). It also features my study co-authored by Bettina Kohlrausch on inequality and income loss during the crises. The paper is available here.

For HANS. the Hans-Böckler-Foundation newsletter, I wrote an opinion piece based on our latest findings. You can find it here and my tweet here.

Our new report on income distribution in Germany is available. It is divided in two parts. The first part shows how incomes developed between 2010 and 2017 with SOEP data. Incomes in all income classes rose with the exception of those at the lower end. As incomes in the middle also benefitted, social inequality in general decreased slightly.

In a second part we focus on the most recent developments during the COVID-19 crisis and analyze who suffered income loss with data of the HBS work-force panel. On the one hand the results show that employees affected by the specific direction of the German lockdown were affected (self-employed, freelancers, employees working in the hospitality sector, parents). On the other hand, we find that those employees, who were lacking protection before and who had the lowest incomes were the one´s most frequently affected with high income loss. These findings suggest a rise in social inequality, as low incomes are disadvantaged again and middle incomes are harder hit by the pandemic than high incomes.

Here´s the full report, the press release, my twitter thread summary, and some news reports by SPIEGEL, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Handelsblatt, Rheinische Post (all in German).

Here you can find a 10-minute live interview with Radio Corax.

My employer the Hans-Böckler-Foundation interviewed me on the current Corona situation in Germany and the potential for societal conflict. In short, I see the situation as potentially explosive. The crisis has put a lot of people in existential worries and brought rapid social change. Many people have suffered income loss and many perceive the burden sharing as unjust, while we could in fact show that particularly already disadvantaged groups carried most of the burden. As right-wing populist and extremist groups offer visible alternative myths and “explanations” in their growing protests, there is a big risk that many lose trust in political institutions and might eventually turn their backs on democratic dialogue. With that said, it seems even more important to properly explain the restrictions and the aspect of a just distribution of burden sharing should become the focus of attention.

Here is my thread on this with additional calculations and figures (in German only). Here are the tweets of Hans-Böckler-Foundation.