Wer ist noch Mitglied in Gewerkschaften? | Eine Panelanalyse für Westdeutschland

Based on the Socioeconomic Panel, this paper pursues for the first time a panel analysis of trade union membership in West Germany. Its goals are to analyze the intertemporal stability of the membership function and to predict net union density among employees in various sectors as a proxy for union bargaining power. The estimated membership function proves stable over time, i.e. changes in aggregate membership cannot be attributed to changes in the propensity for membership given socioeconomic characteristics; instead, they must be the result of compositional changes. The estimates are used to predict union density at the sectoral level based on the IAB-Beschäftigtenstichprobe