The focus of the research is on private households, with the supply of people and the joint fulfilment of needs taking centre stage. Private households are not only consumers, but also producers. They provide essential social services without which the economy cannot function.

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

A central organising principle of the economy and society is the category of gender (distinction between sex and gender). Socially produced gender concepts have a decisive influence on the behaviour, role models and decisions of individuals and households as well as on economic and political inequalities. This is why the category of gender plays a central role 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 behaviour, which is always accompanied by an alternative course of action. This results in the so-called lifestyle and household style. This means that individuals cannot be viewed in isolation 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 services of general interest. It is interrelated between the individual lifestyle and the social way of life and ultimately leads to everyday and consumer behaviour.

Below you will find further information on research, teaching, theses and the team at the Chair of Lifestyle and Socioeconomics of the Private Household.