Description:
The discussion paper deals with sensitivity influences upon the German personal income distribution in a time perspective. For the first time income-dependent equivalence scales are explicitly applied in a distributional analysis of German data. Furthermore, the effects of income-structural and demographic changes are analysed. With respect to the influences of alternative equivalence scales some robustness of the results becomes apparent when it comes to the ranking between the different observation years. In addition, the increases in inequality, which are caused by the mentioned assumption of income-dependent equivalence scales, are significant in each analysed period. Compared with a status of reference, the au-thor also found impacts towards increases in inequality generated by changes of household structure and by income-structural changes in Germany over time. All in all, the analyses refer to the necessity of a rigorous methodological foundation for distributional studies, especially concerning the selection of a set of (preferably income-dependent) equivalence scales.