Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Rent Control Reduces Economic Inequality at a Price

Over the course of the 20th century, governments have frequently used rent control to keep rents affordable, especially in times of crisis when housing is scarce. Existing research shows that rent control has undesirable side effects, such as overall societal welfare losses, market misallocation, a declining housing supply, and lower mobility. However, there has been little research examining the effect ...

Gender Gaps in Employment, Working Hours and Wages in Germany: Trends and Developments over the Last 35 Years

In an Imperfect World Policy Rules Cannot be Perfect Either

It is striking that economists in particular firmly believe in the benefits of rule-binding, even though this belief runs counter to the standard assumption of economic theory that we humans are self-interested and therefore extremely resourceful when it comes to circumventing inconvenient government regulations, e.g. taxes. In Public Choice Theory, politicians are even assumed to have nothing but ...

Measurement equivalence in probability and nonprobability online panels

Nonprobability online panels are commonly used in the social sciences as a fast and inexpensive way of collecting data in contrast to more expensive probability-based panels. Given their ubiquitous use in social science research, a great deal of research is being undertaken to assess the properties of nonprobability panels relative to probability ones. Much of this research focuses on selection bias, ...

Companies Contribute Significantly to the Integration of Refugees in Germany

Following the 2015 refugee influx, recent studies have found that around one in four companies have hired refugees. A survey of 100 companies that hired refugees shows that hiring refugees can increase employee satisfaction, improve reputations, and positively affect corporate developments. At the same time, hiring refugees also poses challenges for employers. These include barriers in the hiring process, ...

Pandemic Depression: COVID-19 and the Mental Health of the Self-Employed

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these ...

Urban Land Use Fragmentation and Human Well-Being

We study how land use fragmentation affects the life satisfaction of city dwellers. To this end, we calculate fragmentation metrics based on exact geographical coordinates of land use from the European Urban Atlas and of households from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Using ordinary least squares and fixed effects specifications, we find little effect on life satisfaction when aggregating over land ...

Sociohistorical Change in Urban Older Adults' Perceived Speed of Time and Time Pressure

OBJECTIVES: Perceptions of time are shaped by sociohistorical factors. Specifically, economic growth and modernization often engender a sense of acceleration. Research has primarily focused on one time perception dimension (perceived time pressure) in one subpopulation (working-age adults), but it is not clear whether historical changes extend to other dimensions (e.g., perceived speed of time) and ...

Discounting Behavior in Problem Gambling

Problem gamblers discount delayed rewards more rapidly than do non-gambling controls. Understanding this impulsivity is important for developing treatment options. In this article, we seek to make two contributions: First, we ask which of the currently debated economic models of intertemporal choice (exponential versus hyperbolic versus quasi-hyperbolic) provides the best description of gamblers’ discounting ...

The Development of Life Goals Across the Adult Life Span

Objectives: Life goals are important organizing units for individual agency in development. On a societal level, they align with age-normative developmental tasks; on the individual level, they guide people’s attempts at shaping their own development. This study investigates the development of life goals across the adult life span with a focus on differences regarding gender, parental status, education, ...