Walter Müller, born in Menznau, Switzerland, in 1942. Ph.D. from the Universität Mannheim. Professor of Sociology at the Universität Mannheim.
Fellow (1 September 1996 – 30 June 1997)
During my stay at NIAS I have studied various problems of the comparative analysis of social inequality in modern societies, its variation among countries, its changes in time and its consequences. Together with Robert Erikson I have worked on the question of the relation between the expansion of educational systems and the occupational returns for individuals on different levels of education. Together with Yossi Shavit I have studied how the returns of education in occupational and labour market outcomes vary between countries and how and why this variation is related to various institutional characteristics of national educational systems.
I have also written on the consequences of German reunification on the inequalities of income in East and West Germany and have done work on the impacts of the changing class structure for politics, in particular on the transformations of the class cleavage in political orientations and party preferences.