Press releases

Voters of right-wing populist parties are increasingly in favor of dismantling the welfare state in order to be able to compete with other countries. This is according to a survey of 12,000 voters in Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. “The right-wing populist spectrum sees the welfare state as a form of redistribution towards immigrants,” says Marcel Thum, Director of the ifo Institute’s Dresden Branch.

Inequality in the labor market between men and women in Germany is at its greatest when there are children involved, finds an international research group that has examined the development of inequality in 17 countries in Europe and North America over the past 50 years. Among 30-year-olds, mothers earn on average 70 to 80 percent less than fathers. For childless people of the same age, the difference is much smaller and has fallen to less than 5 percent.  

Economic researchers from various countries have called on the EU to view the energy crisis following the Russian attack on Ukraine as a wake-up call and to strive for better cooperation in Europe. “Not only can switching to non-fossil energy sources reduce strategic dependency: if done correctly, it can also lower electricity prices and help the EU and its member states achieve their climate targets.

Right-wing extremists gain votes in regions where the risk of poverty is growing, according to recent ifo Institute calculations. In Germany, if the proportion of households below the poverty line increases by 1 percentage point, the share of votes for far-right parties in federal elections increases by 0.5 percentage points. “This is statistically and politically significant,” says ifo researcher Florian Dorn. Between 1998 and 2017, the proportion of poorer households rose by 1.9 percentage points. The poverty line is defined as 60 percent of the median income.  

The ifo Institute, EconPol Europe, and the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition (ERCST) have urged the future European Commission to consider climate action also as a matter of economic, industrial, and competition policy. “This is due to the cost implications of CO2 restrictions as well as the economic opportunities created by emerging industries,” they wrote in a report published in Brussels on Friday.