Zarah Westrich Successfully Defends Dissertation on Working Hours and Social Comparisons

In mid-June of 2025, Zarah Westrich defended her dissertation “Work, Compare, Repeat: Social Comparisons as a Determinant of Working Hours in Germany” at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her thesis analyzes the relationship between income inequality and working hours in Germany, focusing on the question of how income inequality influences time spent on paid employment and unpaid care work. Theoretically Westrich explores how inequality relates to meritocratic competition and why the meritocratic narrative of hard work is used to justify social hierarchies. Empirically she depicts time use trends and analyzes panel data at the household level. Her supervisor was Till van Treeck, professor of socioeconomics at the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Institute for Socio-Economics. Zarah Westrich was a doctoral researcher at the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy from 2021 and is now a research fellow in Professor van Treeck’s department.