Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

A Semiparametric Analysis of Conditional Income Distributions

We explore the application of structured additive distributional regression for the analysis of conditional income distributions in Germany following the reunification using the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP) database. This methodology allows us to explore both between and within income inequality at a highly disaggregated level. Using a bootstrapped version of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, we find ...

The 2015 Refugee Crisis in Germany: Concerns about Immigration and Populism

This paper investigates the effect of the refugee crisis, and the related government’s asylum policy, on concerns about immigration of the German population. Exploiting exogenous variation in survey interview timing of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), I employ a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the short-term causal effect of the refugee crisis on concerns about immigration. The ...

The Study of Social Change and Longitudinal Studies: A Comparison of Panel and Cohort Design

Longitudinal Surveys and the Study of Occupational Mobility: Panel and Retrospective Design in Comparison

The "Discovery" of Youth's Learning Potential Early in the Life Course. Project description, research questions, methods and design

“Underachievement” is a well-established educational research field. However, both longitudinal and interdisciplinary studies on the interplay between individuals’ learning potential and educational attainment are rare, as are analyses of life course consequences of underachievement. This psychological, sociological, and economic longitudinal study aims to contribute to our knowledge of social disparities ...

The Measurement and Importance of General Reasoning Potentials in Schools and Labor Markets: Pre-Test Report

Shaping Earnings Insecurity: Labor Market Policy and Institutional Factors

We examine the relationship between earnings insecurity, labor market policies/institutions, product market regulation, and macroeconomic shocks across Europe in the 1990s by means of the non‐linear least squares method. Earnings insecurity is proxied by transitory variability in earnings, which captures transitory earnings shocks, and by earnings volatility, which captures both permanent and transitory ...

Earnings Dynamics and Inequality in EU, 1994-2001

This paper uses ECHP for 14 EU countries to explore the dynamic structure of individual earnings and the extent to which changes in cross-sectional earnings inequality reflect transitory or permanent components of individual lifecycle earnings variation. Increases in inequality reflect increases in permanent differentials in four countries and increases in both components in two. Decreases in inequality ...

Equalizing or Disequalizing Lifetime Earnings Differentials? Earnings Mobility in the EU: 1994-2001

Do EU citizens have an increased opportunity to improve their position in the distribution of lifetime earnings? To what extent does earnings mobility work to equalize/disequalize longerterm earnings relative to cross-sectional inequality and how does it differ across the EU? Our basic assumption is that mobility measured over a horizon of 8 years is a good proxy for lifetime mobility. We used the ...

Increased Opportunity to Move Up the Economic Ladder? Earnings Mobility in EU: 1994-2001

Do EU citizens have an increased opportunity to improve their position in the distribution of earnings over time? This question is answered by exploring short and long-term wage mobility for males across 14 EU countries between 1994 and 2001 using ECHP. Mobility is evaluated using rank measures which capture positional movements in the distribution of earnings. All countries recording an increase in ...