The Aging of the Unions in West Germany, 1980–2006

Claus Schnabel and Joachim Wagner ()

No 3661, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using data from the social survey ALLBUS for West Germany in the period 1980 to 2006, this paper demonstrates that union members are on average older than non-unionized employees. The probability of being unionized shows the inverted U-shaped pattern in age conjectured by Blanchflower (BJIR 2007) only in very few years. It is demonstrated that both intra-cohort change and cohort replacement effects have played a roughly equal role in the substantial fall in union density since 1980. If older cohorts with high densities continue to be replaced by young cohorts with low densities, average union density will fall further.

Keywords: West Germany; union density; union membership; cohort effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2008-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik , 2008, 228 (5-6), 497-511

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3661.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Aging of the Unions in West Germany, 1980–2006 (2008)
Working Paper: The Aging of the unions in West Germany, 1980-2006 (2008)
Working Paper: The aging of the unions in West Germany, 1980 - 2006 (2008)
Working Paper: The aging of the unions in West Germany, 1980-2006 (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3661

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().