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Veranstaltungsformat: Hybrid

Jointly organized with DGS

Jointly organized with: Spatial Mobility Working Group of the Urban and Regional Sociology Section of the German Sociological Association (DGS)

In the context of the digital transformation driven by COVID-19-induced changes in the labor market, educational system, and society in general, processes of spatial mobility are as relevant as ever. For instance, the widespread use of telework is decoupling individuals’ and households’ decisions about where to live and where to work. COVID-19 and lockdowns changed perceptions of what constitutes desirable and appropriate places to work, study, and live.

The influx of refugees into European countries following 2015 entailed many newcomers whose decisions about where to work and where to live are shaping their host countries in many respects. Research on refugees’ spatial mobility within host countries is therefore indispensable, especially in light of current events following the military conflict in Ukraine.

There have been significant methodological advances in recent years, with new data types being used for spatial mobility research. In particular, small-scale neighborhood-level and geolocated data allow for granulated analysis, while digital trace data from smartphones, sensors, or the Internet provide new and unique information. Combining these data with established survey or administrative data opens up promising new avenues for research.

In addition to these topics, the workshop will focus on a broad range of issues related to research on spatial mobilities, including internal migration, commuting, residential multi-locality, student mobility, virtual mobility, and others. Timely research on changing spatial mobility patterns and their implications for existing and emerging social inequalities is crucial. The workshop aims to bring together current research from sociologists, labor economists, demographers, geographers, and scholars from related fields.

A non-exhaustive list of topics is:

  • Spatial mobility in the labor market and the educational system
  • Mobility decisions of the unemployed
  • Gendered and household mobility patterns
  • Spatial mobility and social networks
  • Spatial mobility in the context of neighborhoods
  • (Im-)mobility patterns and mobility decision-making
  • Applications of innovative data sources, like geo-coded, linked, or digital trace data
  • New methods for analyzing spatial mobility

Research on earnings inequalities in heterosexual couples has shown that women tend to earn substantially less than their male partners (e.g.Bianci et al. 1999; Estevez-Abe 2008; Dotti-Sani 2015) and also that these inequalities have been quite consistent over time and resistant to institutional change (Dieckhoff et al. 2020). These inequalities are problematic as they impact women’s future labour market outcomes. We know from existing work that women who earn less than their partner are more likely to drop out of the labour market (Shafer 2011); switch from full-time to part-time (Dieckhoff et al. 2016) and less like to advance their careers (Bröckel et al. 2015). Earnings inequalities in couples are hence not only the result of inequalities in the labour market, they can also further enhance them. It is thus important to understand these inequalities and how these evolve over the life-course. In this effort, we investigate using the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) 1992-2018 how earnings inequalities evolve with duration of couple’s cohabiting relationships based on German panel data. We also examine whether different patterns can be observed for different cohorts.

We characterize work hour constraints in the labor market and quantify welfare gains to workers
from moving from their current hours to their optimal hours. There is a firm component
to work hours that explains approximately 27% of the overall variability in hours. Contrary to
predictions from established models of work hours determination, there is virtually no correlation
between worker preference for hours and employer hour requirements. Instead, high-wage
workers are more likely to sort to firms offering more hours even though they have a preference
for fewer hours. Using a revealed preference approach, we find that workers are off their labor
supply curve, on average. The typical worker has an inelastic labor supply and prefers firms
that offer more hours. Workers are willing to trade off 25% of earnings on average to move
from their current employer to an employer that offers the ideal hours, at a given wage level.

We draw on research on status processes and cultural change to develop predictions about gender status beliefs in the United States. We expect that

  • while explicitly men and women may not distinguish competency and worth by gender, they do so implicitly,
  • that younger respondents, especially women, hold less consensual gender status beliefs, and
  • men are less likely to alter their gender status beliefs due to loss aversion.

We conduct two studies to assess these arguments. The first uses novel nationally-representative data to describe the distributions of status beliefs in the US population; the second demonstrates the importance of these beliefs for allocating rewards by gender. Combined, the studies demonstrate the distribution of gender status beliefs by age and gender, and the implications for gender inequality, thereby illustrating the role of cultural status beliefs for maintaining gender stratification and the potential role of cohort change for changing such beliefs. Finally, we discuss promising approaches to reduce the impact of gender status beliefs in labor market processes.

Aims and Topics

During Germany’s EU Council Presidency in 2020, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) will host an interdisciplinary labour market conference. This conference will focus on labour market transitions and on the evaluation of policies that governments implement to smooth such transitions.

Collection of abstracts (Abstracts der Vorträge)

Programme highlights

The conference features keynotes by Jutta Allmendinger, President of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of Educational Sociology and Labour Market Research at the Humboldt University Berlin, and Christian Dustmann, Professor of Economics at the University College London and Director of CReAM – Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration. Two other keynotes will be presented by Dennis Radtke, Member of the European Parliament, and Prof László Andor (PhD) of Corvinus University of Budapest and former EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. The conference also includes a political key note and a panel discussion with Dr Nicola Brandt, Head of OECD Berlin Centre, Christian Dustmann und Bernd Fitzenberger, Director of IAB and Professor of Econometrics at the Humboldt University Berlin about “Vocational Training and labor market transitions: The future model for Europe?”