Beschreibung

"In Germany, all employed workers pay into a mandatory unemployment insurance scheme. By a reform in 2006, a voluntary unemployment insurance scheme was introduced. Under the new scheme, individuals who work abroad, as caregivers at home or who start-up as self-employed workers can insure themselves against unemployment. Yet, little is known about this labor market policy tool partly because administrative data on the voluntarily insured workers were incomplete in the past. More specifically, only the selective sample of those voluntarily insured workers who became unemployed was observed in the data. Aiming to close this gap and to contribute to a more complete picture on this labor market policy tool, we present new administrative data on the contribution payments to voluntary unemployment insurance. These data became available very recently. Before we describe the data and how they can be accessed, we explain the institutional setting." (Author's abstract, © De Gruyter) ((en))