The focus of the research is on private households, whereby the care of the household members and the common fulfilment of needs is in the central interest. Private households are not only consumers, but also producers. They provide socially essential services without the economy cannot work.

Social life and economic growth are not possible without the activities of care work. Economic and social interrelationships can only be understood if unpaid work is also included. It follows that socio-economics is based on a more comprehensive understanding of work: According to this, not only gainful employment is part of work, but also and above all domestic and care work: Because people have to be born, cared for, brought up , before they work in offices, building sites or anywhere else. This is the invisible basis of the market, so that the economy can take place at all. So, socio-economics tries to take a broader view, so that often separately conceived areas such as public - private; productive - reproductive; paid - unpaid; masculine - feminine are logically linked.

A central organising principle of economy and society is the category of gender. The socially produced gender conceptions decisively shape the behaviour, role models and decisions of individuals and households as well as economic and political inequality relations. Therefore, the category of gender is of central importance in the research of this professorship.

In addition to the resources of a household (e.g. time, income, assets, education), the attitudes to life of the private household are also part of household action, which are always accompanied by an alternative action. This results in the so-called lifestyle and household style. Thus, individuals cannot be considered separately from their social context (household structure system).

The private dimension of lifestyle is understood as individual ideas about a "good" and "successful life" (Schlegel-Matthies 2019) and as a central element of private provision for one's existence. It is interrelated between individual lifestyles and societal lifestyles and ultimately culminates in everyday behaviour.

Below you will find further information on research, teaching and the team of the professorship of Socioeconomics of the Household.