BiB Information Event 2021 • 26.01.2021Is the Corona Pandemic Fostering Social Change?

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“The current issues can only be resolved through the interaction of many stakeholders. As the Federal Government’s research institute, the BiB plays an important advisory role here,” Dr. Klingner emphasised.

Demographic and social changes

The consequences of the pandemic for demographic developments cannot yet be clearly discerned, as Prof. Schneider pointed out. However, he is expecting certain influences to be lasting, especially on internal migration within Germany, as the suburbanisation processes observed since 2012 could now intensify.

Despite the slight decline predicted in life expectancy, the family sociologist does not expect accelerated shrinkage of the population in the longer term due to the pandemic, but rather a redistribution of population numbers. On the basis of the current data, it is not yet possible to determine what influence the pandemic will have on the birth rate. Based on the development in the first three quarters of 2020, however, the pandemic is more likely to cause a slight decline in births than an increase.

Nevertheless, the pandemic has already triggered a significant change in working practices and mobility behaviour. The culture of presence in the workplace is coming to an end which, in turn, will also change mobility behaviour, he predicts. Overall, the pandemic will trigger and accelerate social change in many areas.

Data problems in calculating mortality

Based on the provisional estimated mortality data for COVID-19 in 2020, Dr. Michael Mühlichen showed how the first and second coronavirus waves led to raised mortality in April/May and increasingly also from the end of October. He is therefore expecting life expectancy to shorten in 2020. However, the available data do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about causal chains. Thus, the number of corona deaths includes both patients that died from COVID-19 and also those who had COVID-19 at the time of death.

Even though the Robert Koch Institute assumes that the majority died of COVID-19, it is not yet possible to establish a clear relationship between deaths and causes of death. Germany, therefore, needs a mortality register, he concluded.

Unfavourable working conditions and low wages in the social professions

Taking the situation in social occupation groups such as health care, care for the elderly, education and social work as examples, Dr. Inga Laß highlighted how it is mainly women who have to contend with unfavourable working conditions such as excessive time pressure, under- or overemployment and low wages. This not only exacerbates the wage gap between women and men, but is also reflected in the "gender pension gap", i.e. a significant gap in pension levels to the detriment of women. "All these factors demonstrate how important it is to upgrade the social professions – for example through higher hourly wages, greater time flexibility and long-term health and stress management," the researcher emphasised..

What makes cities worth living in?

Based on a study on expatriates conducted by the German Foreign Office, PD Dr. Heiko Rüger analysed how the living conditions in cities affect the quality of life. It emerged that environmental and living conditions such as the natural environment, housing quality and the provision of public goods (especially air and water quality) play a major role in determining how respondents assess their quality of life. The study thus provides information on the relative importance of a range of influences on quality of life, whereas previous studies often only examined individual factors.

Cultural diversity in the Federal Administration

At 12 per cent, the proportion of employees with a migration background in the Federal Administration is low compared to that in the private sector or the population as a whole. This is one of the key findings of the first central employee survey conducted by BiB and the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration on cultural diversity in the Federal Administration. However, there are significant differences between the individual authorities, said BiB scientist Martin Weinmann. In relation to their total share among all employees, it emerged that employees with a migration background are overrepresented in the lower levels of the civil service, yet underrepresented in the upper levels. Despite the disparities in the representation levels in the different career paths, an employee assessment of the diversity climate yielded a value of 3.2 on a scale from1 to 5 – and thus a positive assessment on average.