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Journal for Labour Market Research

Table 13 Description of individual employment history variables gained from the Pension Register

From: Imputation rules for the implementation of the pre-unification education variable in the BASiD Data SetImputationsregeln für die Generierung der Bildungsvariable in den BASiD-Daten vor der Wiedervereinigung

Variable1)

Definition

SES Coding2)

EMPLOYMENT

Employment spells include periods of employment

13

 

subject to social security contributions and

 
 

(after 1998) marginal employment.

 

UNEMPLOYMENT

Unemployment spells include periods of

6, 7, 8

 

unemployment with and without transfer

 
 

receipt (only FRG).3)

 

NON-EMPLOYMENT

Non-employment spells include periods of

3, 4

 

child raising, care giving as well as periods

 
 

with missing information on the employment status.

 

ILLNESS

Illness spells include periods of long-term illness

5

 

(FRG \(>\) 6 weeks; GDR \(>\) 4 weeks before 1984, no

 
 

minimum restriction afterwards).

 

TRAINING

Training spells include periods of school or

1, 2

 

university attendance after the age of 16 and

 
 

periods of training and apprenticeship.

 
  1. 1) Note that the recorded pre-unification pension activity histories are less precise than the post-unification histories. The reason is that the transfer of the activities was mainly based on former GDR citizens’ social security cards. These cards record the number of months of employment, illness and maternity leave during a particular year, but do not allow for tracking these spells on a monthly basis. As a result, compared to the pension spells after Unification, which provide exact monthly information on all pension relevant activities, information on the incidence of pre-unification employment, illness and maternity leave spells is available only on an annual basis.
  2. 2) Further possible states of the SES variable are: Military service (SES = 9), Retirement (SES = 15) and “Else” (SES = 12).
  3. 3) A spell of unemployment in the Pension Register requires individuals to be registered as unemployed and to obtain public transfers. The latter include benefits such as unemployment insurance, and – prior to 2005 – the means-tested social assistance and unemployment assistance benefits. After 2004, unemployment and social assistance were merged into one unified benefit, also known as ‘unemployment benefit II’ (ALG II). As the latter targets only employable individuals, a spell involving the receipt of ALG II automatically fulfills the requirements to be recorded as unemployed in the Pension Register. Prior to 2005, spells with social assistance benefits fulfill the above requirements only if individuals were registered as unemployed. Otherwise they are recorded as non-employment spells. As a consequence, the Pension Register does not permit a consistent definition of un- and non-employment prior to and after 2005.
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