Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), income inequality and poverty in Germany from 2002 to 2009, i. e. economic well-being of different social groups in front of and during the economic crisis in the years 2008/09, are considered. Concretely, changes of structures in different income areas of German income distribution are taken into account by a new method for measuring inequality and poverty. The key elements of this new method are a) well-being orientations on group-specific well-being levels and b) the usage of variable equivalence scales for the different income areas.On this basis, results of binary logistical regressions are presented. It is tested whether a person belongs to a certain income area or not. In this context, the likelihood of unemployed persons for being located in the low-income area (weakly) increased between 2008 and 2009.Such microeconomic calculations are contrasted with macroeconomic variables and their development over time. The macroeconomic variables considered in this context are economic growth, inflation, and general unemployment.Additionally, income dynamics especially during crisis is captured via transition matrices. For instance, between 2008 and 2009 the share of persons, who stayed within the poverty area, grew by five percentage points, compared with 2007/2008. All in all, the paper’s findings produce valuable insights into cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of the crisis on inequality and poverty in Germany.
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