Analysis of the distribution of income and wealth in Germany II

The five previous “poverty and wealth reports” (Armuts- und Reichtumsberichte) that were presented by the German government have contributed substantially to the understanding of social mobility and the allocation of financial resources in Germany.

Building on the existing framework, in preparation for the sixth edition of the poverty and wealth report, it is essential to improve and enhance the current methodology. Important requirements concern e.g. the temporal consistency with preparatory studies for previous editions of the report as well as with other preparatory studies for the upcoming edition. This in turn requires highly standardized data preparation and cleaning.

In contrast to previous editions, the upcoming poverty and wealth report focuses more strongly on analyzing causal relationships. In scope of this, more focus is put on investigating the formation of the primary distribution than before. An additional focus lies on analyzing the income distribution and investigating driving forces.

Another novelty concerns the distribution of tasks between the participating preparatory studies, which is why this study also incorporates aspects regarding social mobility in the context of income mobility.