Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Social Desirability and Central Tendency Bias in the Survey and Variation of Life Satisfaction

Even though life satisfaction is an empirically extensively researched well-being concept, there are still open questions regarding the variation of life satisfaction and the influence of variables that are not collected in data sets such as the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). In this article, I explore the question to what extent the variation of life satisfaction is influenced by biases resulting ...

Biological perspective of socioeconomic inequality

An inductive typology of egocentric networks with data from the Socio-Economic Panel

In this article we apply Random Forests to data from the German Socio-Economic-Panel (SOEP), creating an inductive typology of egocentric networks. Using an earlier application of the machine learning algorithm as a guideline, we are putting the wider applicability of the method to the test by using data not exclusively constructed for network analysis and focusing on core networks of respondents. ...

Gender, loneliness and happiness during COVID-19

We analyse a measure of loneliness from a representative sample of German individuals interviewed in both 2017 and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Both men and women felt lonelier during the COVID-19 pandemic than they did in 2017. The pandemic more than doubled the gender loneliness gap: women were lonelier than men in 2017, and the 2017-2020 rise in loneliness was far larger for ...

A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany

This paper exploits the idiosyncratic line of contact separating Allied and Soviet troops within East Germany at the end of WWII to study political resistance in a non-democracy. When Nazi Germany surrendered, 40% of what would become the authoritarian German Democratic Republic was initially under Allied control but was ceded to Soviet control less than two months later. Brief Allied exposure increased ...

Rather doomed than uncertain: risk attitudes and transmissive behavior under asymptomatic infection

We analyze the relation between individuals’ risk aversion and their willingness to expose themselves to infection when faced with an asymptomatic infectious disease. We show that in a high prevalence environment, increasing individuals’ risk aversion increases their propensity to engage in transmissive behavior. The reason for this result is that as risk aversion increases, exposure which leads to ...

SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence in Germany: results from the second wave of the RKI-SOEP study: Elisabetta Mercuri

introduction: The first wave of the “Corona Monitoring bundesweit” (RKI-SOEP) study showed that shortly before the start of the German vaccination program only about 2% of adults (> 18 years) had already experienced SARS-CoV-2 infection and more than half of these cases had been detected and notified. The objectives of the second wave of this study are to further investigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 ...

The ‘German job miracle’ and its impact on income inequality: a decomposition study

In den letzten 15 Jahren vor Beginn der COVID-19-Krise hat Deutschland einen starken und kontinuierlichen Anstieg der Beschäftigung erlebt - das sogenannte "deutsche Jobwunder". Zeitgleich verblieb die Ungleichheit der verfügbaren Haushaltseinkommen, nach einer kurzen Phase deutlichen Anstiegs, relativ konstant. Diese Studie untersucht die Auswirkungen von Beschäftigungsänderungen auf die ...

Long-Term Dynamics of Voluntary Engagement: Differentiating Social Structural from Cohort and Period Effects

Prior research has suggested three explanations why levels of voluntary engagement rise and fall over time within societies. A social structural explanation considers individual resources crucial for engagement and argues that a redistribution of those resources may bring about changes in engagement. A cohort-based explanation considers socialisation and experiences in formative years as crucial for ...

Political Spillovers of Workplace Democracy in Germany

While works councils provide a highly developed mechanism to promote workplace democracy, research on their consequences has been dominated by economic aspects. This study brings a new perspective to the understanding of works councils by examining their influence on workers’ political behavior. Political spillover theory suggests that participation in the firm’s decision making has the potential to ...