Research

Regional economic decline is argued to be a major factor behind the recent rise of far-right support in liberal democracies. We generalize this finding using a unique county-level panel covering the fall (1949-1972) and rise (1972-today) of far-right voting in West Germany. Our results show that regional economic ascent predicts the initial fall of the far-right just as economic decline predicts its rise. We then combine the county-level panel with individual-level survey data to -- for the first time -- test the relative importance of regional (places) and individual (people) economic conditions for far-right support. Changes of household income are more predictive of changes in far-right support than regional growth. Regional growth, although salient, matters only for the 65+. People, it therefore seems, matter for far-right support more than places.

We analyze income inequality between and within German regions from 1957 to 2020 using a new panel dataset. Two parallel strands of literature have documented rising inequality within industrialized countries, on the one hand, and rising inequality between their regions, on the other hand. Understanding how inequality between and within regions is related remains an open question. We find convergence between regions during the decades after World War II. Post-war convergence was followed by some divergence since the 1980s. Most of this divergence occurred between counties, not between commuting zones. We find a near-unanimous increase of income concentration within German commuting zones, which has accelerated since the mid-1990s. Since then, rising GDP per capita no longer coincides with declining income concentration.

We investigate the potential acceptance of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in Germany using representative data from the Socio-Economic Panel (January–December 2021). Our analysis reveals that just over half of the population (50.44%) support such a mandate, primarily because they believe it necessary to achieve sufficient vaccination rates. Conversely, opposition (49.56%) is largely rooted in a desire to uphold individual freedom. Supporters are generally older, less educated, less healthy, childless, politically centrist, and more trusting of the political system, with 90% already vaccinated. In contrast, only 62% of opponents are vaccinated.

We compare preventive behaviours and attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany and Japan, two countries with similarly strict social norms but vastly different COVID-19 infection rates. We find that the majority in both countries support measures like vaccination and avoiding symptomatic individuals. Yet, in Germany, preventive bevaviors (avoiding crowds, physical contact, and public transport) are more pronounced, while preventive attitutes related to vaccination are more prevalent in Japan. We also observe greater uniformity in Japanese behaviors across social groups, highlighting the possible importance of social homogeneity in public health strategies. 

SOEP-CoV - “The Spread of the Coronavirus in Germany: Socio-Economic Factors and Consequences” is a joint research project of SOEP at DIW Berlin and Bielefeld University. The project was launched in April 2020 immediately after the outbreak of the virus in Germany and aimed to establish a survey database for research about the short- and long-term societal impacts of the virus in Germany. In this documentation, we provide an overview of the study design and survey methods and offer details about the SOEP-CoV data, which are openly available for scientific research.