Timo Wiesner

"Behind Closed Doors: Intra-Couple Pension and Wealth Gaps in Germany and Beyond" 🚪👩‍🦳👴
@lisdata.bsky.social / @liser.lu policy brief by @nicolekapelle.bsky.social and me out now!
Read more here 👉
www.lisdatacenter.org/newsletter/n...

📢 We're hiring!!! 📢 If you are interested in comparative social policy, welfare state research and quantitative methods, then this might be the job for you!

Interested? Link to the call: www.mpisoc.mpg.de/karriere/ste...

Need more info? Please check out our website! 
inequalityhub.org

Happy to share this new paper @jeppjournal.bsky.social with my great colleagues @dweisstanner.bsky.social & Carsten Jensen.

In "Winning with equality", we show "how left-wing parties attract votes but [in doing so] amplify electoral cleavages"

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Key points in 📈👇

Even after two world wars and a century of upheaval, wealth in 🇩🇪 shows strong persistence. About 8% of today’s top fortunes trace back to the early 1900s: 82 of the richest families today were already among the richest in 1913, challenging the idea of a fully meritocratic elite.

⏰ Job alert: We are looking for PhD Researchers! Only one week left to apply for our open #PhD positions in #socialpolicy at CRC 1342 | @unibremen.bsky.social.
🗓️ Application deadline: 14.01.2026 Details: www.socialpolicydynamics.de/about-the-cr...

🚨Job alert! 🚨

I'm advertising a PhD position (66%) in Comparative Politics at HU Berlin. Ideal candidates combine a research interest in autocratic politics, conflict, and/or political violence with strong quantitative methods skills.

⏳ 4 (+2) years | 🗓 DL 16.01; Start March/April 26

More info:

This article seeks to differentiate between different types of radical right-wing voters in Europe, analysing their social characteristics and identifying different voting motives.

#EarlyView in #BJS ➡️ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Definitely take this with a grain of salt, though, as this was rather quick and dirty.

This effect is stronger for people in higher income positions. However, a crucial difference emerges in the between-country effect, which is also positive in the ESS, possibly due to the more homogeneous country sample.

While recently playing around with the ESS data, I was able to replicate the main finding regarding support for redistribution: rising inequality is associated to stronger support for redistribution within countries.

I also highlight the importance of decomposing country-level effects, particularly for attitudinal differences between income groups.

In the meantime, this view has received further support (and nuance) by studies such as this wonderful paper by
@alexanderhorn.bsky.social and colleagues: doi.org/10.1017/S000...)

Instead, the results align with some previous work (e.g,
@nilssteiner.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1111/1475...), and point to a 'supply-side' problem regarding redistribution.

The results suggest that previous 'demand-side' explanations for the 'Puzzle of Rising Inequality' (i.e., citizens are unaware of and/or do not care about rising inequality) do not hold.

I show that people are neither unaware nor unconcerned about rising (!) inequality, challenging the notion of a lacking popular response to contemporary inequality dynamics.

Just in time before the end of the year: My first dissertation paper, in which I examine whether the public response to rising income inequality is really lacking, has officially been published in the latest issue of the Socio-Economic Review #SER.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/...

I also highlight the importance of decomposing country-level effects, particularly for attitudinal differences between income groups.

My main current research focus is on the way statistical significance (SS) can mislead us when evaluating quantitative results. A new demonstration:

Use of SS suggested that Right-to-Work laws had a “null” impact on occupational fatalities. But the data came from (US) state-level death rates. 1/3

1/ Does growing up poor always lead to political apathy?

Very happy to share my first paper published (open access) in @electoralstudies.bsky.social, where I show that parents' influence mitigates the poverty gap in participation, while economic mobility does not.

🔗 shorturl.at/p5Bac

The relevance of meritocratic beliefs for redistributive preferences increases with income A leading explanation for why in democratic societies the rich are not taxed more is that meritocratic beliefs breed tolerance for inequality. We prob…

📢New publication:

The poor want redistribution regardless of whether they think society is meritocratic.

🎉 Big congrats to my former supervisees — now co-authors, @irenepaneda.bsky.social, @jonnekamphorst.bsky.social, and Bala Battu!

🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Also, one of the stream organizers started a large project which might lead to some interesting papers on this welfare-experiences.org (maybe it'd worthwhile to check publications of the individual researchers..)

I attended this year's stream on welfare experiences at espanet, and there was definitely some work on that. Sadly, one of the papers I had in mind is not available as a working paper, but this comes close: doi.org/10.1080/1369.... Does this come close to what you were looking for?

Class-based network segregation, economic inequality, and redistributive preferences across societies Abstract. Rising economic inequality has renewed interest in how class-based social networks shape redistributive preferences across societies. While previ

1/
My new article in European Sociological Review (@europeansocreview.bsky.social) examines how class-based network segregation and national-level inequality shape support for redistribution, using data from 32,717 individuals across 31 countries.
DOI: doi.org/10.1093/esr/...
👇

Alzheimer’s decline slows with just a few thousand steps a day A modest increase in physical activity can delay cognitive decline by three years — or more.

Jeepers @nature.com I thought we were past this

Abstract: "we demonstrated an association between higher physical activity and slower cognitive and functional decline"

Press brief: "taking as few as 3,000 to 5,000 steps per day can help to stave off mental decline"

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cassandra from the far right: how the German and Austrian populist radical right links climate skepticism with economic issues This article asks how two populist radical right parties, the German AfD and the Austrian FPÖ, communicate about climate on Twitter/X. Analyzing a corpus of 6,254 tweets, it pays special attention ...

📣 In a new open access article in @environmentalpol.bsky.social, I examine how appeals to "economic realism" – like the claim that we "can’t afford climate policy" – have long structured far-right #climateskepticism @cidape.bsky.social @ifswien.bsky.social
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Banner featuring the hashtag "#OpenAccess" in white text on a green background, above the name "American Political Science Review" in white text on a blue background.

'Why Inequalities Persist: Parties’ (Non)Responses to Economic Inequality, 1970–2020' by @alexanderhorn.bsky.social, Martin Haselmayer & @klueserthan.bsky.social was the most-downloaded @apsrjournal.bsky.social paper in August 2025.

You can read it #OpenAccess here - https://cup.org/4nwEeCo

Das Argument bleibt recht dünn.. aber es existiert doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Saw the presentation, also a really cool paper! I I think the "leaky pipeline" + only diffuse/superficial (or maybe also "potential") demand might be able to explain a lot.

Rising inequality: is the public response really lacking? A comparative longitudinal analysis of perceived inequality and evaluative attitudes Abstract. Rising income inequality in the past decades has triggered an ongoing discussion about how the public perceives and evaluates this trend. Contrar

Sadly not OA. In case you don't have institutional access, hit me up :)
academic.oup.com/ser/advance-...

"Overall, our findings suggest a “ratchet-effect” heuristic: left parties may still push back against rising disparities but have given up on lowering existing levels of inequality"

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...