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The Covid-19 pandemic has created a widespread need for social support. Similar to previous crises, we can observe activation in society to meet these needs: citizens have offered practical, emotional, and financial support, often within their social networks, but also to strangers and civil society organizations. In this paper, we examine the role of social capital in receiving social support during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany using unique micro-level survey data. We investigate the importance of three aspects of social capital – the size of one's support network, social trust, and organizational membership – for receiving (sufficient) social support. We focus on three types of support networks: family and friends, neighbors, and civil society actors. First, we find that while all three elements of social capital matter for receiving social support, a larger support network and organizational embeddedness matter primarily for receiving support beyond family and friendship networks. Second, civil society actors have been less likely to provide sufficient support in the pandemic, mainly acting in addition to strong ties and providing complementary support for individuals in particular need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Covid-19 has produced a set of social characters during the corona crisis and that these characters represent different approaches toward control. Social characters emerge as constructs responding to current discourses. They may function as role models in uncertain times and offer orientation. The paper identifies such characters in communication on the online platform Jodel. It analyses and discusses the properties of the following social characters, which are reconstructed inductively from the data, classifying 156 Jodel posts into the following typology: the social worker, the crisis entrepreneur, the worried and depressed loner, the crisis manager, the admonisher, and the health expert. All these characters also display different approaches to how the crisis could be controlled. Some of them highlight economic discourses, others psychological discourses, and again others bureaucratic discourses. The analysis of the social characters and their approaches to control contributes to research on the role of discourses in modern European societies and on how these discourses contribute to different approaches to controlling a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned with the spatial dimension of the coronavirus crisis and the tensions it created in multilevel governance in the Polish–German border region. Regarding the spatial dimension of the crisis, territoriality is referred to as the political competence to exert control over a national territory and over places particularly affected by the coronavirus crisis and its management – from local hubs of outbreaks to twin cities in border regions facing closed borders. Territoriality was mirrored in the unilateral decisions of the central governments to close national borders in Europe. Considering spatiality as well as the asymmetric multilevel setting of cross-border Polish–German relations, this paper investigates to what extent subnational actors were able to interact in a cross-border sense in this situation. The paper shows the relevance of subnational political authorities and highlights the significance of civil society actors in times of crisis, as they were able to lobby for a less restrictive border management response and helped to hold – merely through digital activities – the web of bilateral relations together. In this light, it may enhance the ability of further research to take a multilevel territorial perspective for a more nuanced picture of the pandemic's effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a timely evaluation of whether the main COVID-19 lockdown policies – remote work, short-time work and closure of schools and childcare – have an immediate effect on the German population in terms of changes in satisfaction with work and family life. Relying on individual level panel data collected before and during the lockdown, we examine (1) how family satisfaction and work satisfaction of individuals have changed over the lockdown period, and (2) how lockdown-driven changes in the labour market situation (i.e. working remotely and being sent on short-time work) have affected satisfactions. We apply first-difference regressions for mothers, fathers, and persons without children. Our results show a general decrease in family satisfaction. We also find an overall decline in work satisfaction which is most pronounced for mothers and those without children who have to switch to short-time work. In contrast, fathers' well-being is less affected negatively and their family satisfaction even increased after changing to short-time work. We conclude that while the lockdown circumstances generally have a negative effect on the satisfaction with work and family of individuals in Germany, effects differ between childless persons, mothers, and fathers with the latter being least negatively affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on three waves of survey data from a non-probability sample from Germany, this paper examines two opposing expectations about the pandemic's impacts on gender equality: The optimistic view suggests that gender equality has increased, as essential workers in Germany have been predominantly female and as fathers have had more time for childcare. The pessimistic view posits that lockdowns have also negatively affected women's jobs and that mothers had to shoulder the additional care responsibilities. Overall, our exploratory analyses provide more evidence supporting the latter view. Parents were more likely than non-parents to work fewer hours during the pandemic than before, and mothers were more likely than fathers to work fewer hours once lockdowns were lifted. Moreover, even though parents tended to divide childcare more evenly, at least temporarily, mothers still shouldered more childcare work than fathers. The division of housework remained largely unchanged. It is therefore unsurprising that women, in particular mothers, reported lower satisfaction during the observation period. Essential workers experienced fewer changes in their working lives than respondents in other occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have shown that exercise withdrawal and forced inactivity lead to negative mood states and increased symptoms of depression. Involuntary inactivity has become reality for millions during the Covid-19 pandemic, as mitigation and containment policies included the closings of sports facilities and leisure infrastructures. Based on representative survey data from Germany (≥14 years, N = 1001), the paper addresses the changes in sport and exercise activities in the pandemic situation and their association with emotional well-being. Findings show a reduced level of emotional well-being in the German population during the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, those individuals who stopped or considerably reduced their sport and exercise activities during the pandemic report a significant decline of well-being compared to the time before the pandemic. Individuals, who reduced sport and exercise due to external constraints, reported the largest decline in well-being. In contrast, the small group of individuals who intensified their sporting activities during the pandemic stands out with the most positive well-being levels. Irrespective of sport and exercise adaptations, findings additionally show that females report a steeper decline in well-being during the crisis compared to men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the willingness of individual citizens to show solidarity in the context of the Eurozone crisis. Taking a cost-sensitive approach to solidarity, we assessed the extent to which citizens would be willing to personally contribute to a bailout fund, and examined the sociodemographic and attitudinal causes for this willingness. We conducted a survey during the 2012 sovereign debt crisis in Germany and Portugal, two Eurozone countries representing a strong economy and a net recipient of loans respectively. As a part of this survey, we used a scenario in which respondents were asked whether they would be willing to pay a European solidarity tax at varying rates. Descriptive findings reveal that 48% of the Germans and 56% of the Portuguese accepted at least one of three tax rates proposed. Multivariate analyses reveal that a willingness to pay is mainly formed by political attitudes and cosmopolitan beliefs, and not by the socio-economic characteristics of respondents. The overall likelihood of emerging social cleavages is rather weak, meaning these findings may encourage European Union actors to internally foster the idea of a socially and financially integrated Europe in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the factors associated with a gendered division of childcare among parents in Germany. While much is known on the gender division of housework in families and the economic and sociological factors that may be driving it, we still know relatively little about whether and how these factors may affect the division of unpaid childcare in families. We first assess the relevance of partner’s combined gender ideologies and relative resources on the division of unpaid childcare. Second, we assess whether the effect of economic resources may be contingent on the partners’ agreement or disagreement on gender ideologies concerning maternal employment. We address these questions using data from the German Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (pairfam) and MLM Growth Curve Models. Our findings consistently show a significant positive effect of partners’ combined gender ideologies and her share of income on his share of childcare. These effects are strongest, and robust, among couples with matching ideologies supporting maternal employment, which we term ‘egalitarian island’ couples. Economically efficient divisions of childcare thus appear dependent upon the couples’ ideological pairing and on mothers’ ideologies towards maternal employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research into educational inequalities has shown the importance of decomposing social origins into parental class, status and education, representing economic, socio-cultural and educational family resources, respectively. But we know little about how inequalities in educational attainment at the micro-level map onto institutional characteristics of educational systems at the macro-level, if we treat social origins in a multidimensional way. Drawing on the rich over-time variation in educational systems in four European countries – Britain, Sweden, Germany and Italy – this paper develops and tests a number of hypotheses regarding the effects of various components of social origins on individuals’ educational attainment in different institutional contexts. It is evident from our results that a great deal of similarity exists across nations with different educational systems in the persisting importance for individuals’ educational attainment of parental class, status and education. But our findings also indicate that changes in the institutional features of educational systems have, in some instances although not in others, served to reinforce or to offset the social processes generating educational inequalities at the micro level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Secondary education is associated with a comparatively high level of inequality in Germany. This has often been attributed to the early ability-based between-school tracking in the German school system. However, as yet there has been no empirical evaluation of the actual impact of initial track placement on social inequality in final school attainment. Since educational reforms in the 1960s increased educational mobility after track placement, it can be expected that initial track allocation has become less important for the process of secondary educational attainment and the inequalities therein. By drawing on longitudinal life-course data for different birth cohorts from the 1930s to the 1980s, this paper analyses temporal developments in the connections between track placement, educational mobility and social inequality in final school outcomes. The analyses reveal that the impact of track placement actually diminished for those cohorts exposed to the reformed school system. Instead, social inequalities in school attainment are increasingly influenced by processes of educational mobility after track allocation. Furthermore, the analyses show that developments in educational mobility have contributed more to declining inequalities in access to upper secondary education than changes of the selectivities in the transition to secondary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]