Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Earnings Dynamics in the East German Transition Process

Earning Dynamics in the East German Transition Process

What Can Happiness Research Tell Us About Altruism? - Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

Happiness and altruism within the extended family

We propose a direct measure of altruism between parents and adult children, using survey data on happiness from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 2000–2004. The question of altruism within families has policy relevance, for example, to understand whether public transfers crowd out private ones. Previous empirical evidence, based on observed transfer behavior, has failed to establish a clear ...

Is Posner right? An empirical test of the Posner argument for transferring health spending from old women to old men

Posner (Aging and old age, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995) proposes the redistribution of health spending from old women to old men to equalize life expectancy. His argument is based on the assumption that the woman’s utility is higher if her husband is alive. Using self-reported satisfaction measures from a long-running German panel survey, the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), the present ...

How working hours influence the life satisfaction of childless men and women, fathers and mothers in Germany

This paper uses the German Socio-Economic Panel to show that fathers – and to a lesser degree childless men and women, are most satisfied with life when working full-time or longer. In contrast, whether mothers spend more or less hours in employment hardly affects their life satisfaction. The rational maximization of income as postulated by family economics cannot explain these results, as they are ...

Income Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Unrelated Between Countries, Associated Within Countries Over Time

This article shows for the first time that people are less satisfied when inequality in their country is higher than before, but not when inequality in their country is higher than in another country. It distinguishes this between- and within-country effect of inequality on life satisfaction by using hybrid regressions with the World Values Survey, the British Household Panel Study, the Australian ...

Experimental Evidence of the Effect of Monetary Incentives on Cross‐Sectional and Longitudinal Response: Experiences from the Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP)

The paper gives an overview of two experiments implemented in the German Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP) considering the effect of monetary incentives on cross‐sectional and longitudinal response propensities. We conclude that the overall effects of monetary incentives on response rates are positive compared to the "classic" SOEP setting, where a charity lottery ticket is offered as an incentive. ...

“Familien in Deutschland” - FiD

There are various independent studies evaluating family policy measures in Germany. So far, a systematic evaluation considering the different goals inherent to these measures was missing. The evaluation of family policy measures on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) and the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) is thus the first systematic overall ...

Brief Report: Short forms of the Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS) with the domains of job, romantic relationship, and region

The U-MICS is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess the identity dimensions from a domain-specific perspective. The present study reports on the development of a short-form version for the domains of job and romantic relationship in young adults from Germany and extends this scale to include the domain of region (nSample1 = 95, 84% female, mean age 22.45 years; nSample2 = 1,795, 71% female, ...