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 ...

Nationally representative results on SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and testing in Germany at the end of 2020

Pre-vaccine SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence data from Germany are scarce outside hotspots, and socioeconomic disparities remained largely unexplored. The nationwide representative RKI-SOEP study (15,122 participants, 18–99 years, 54% women) investigated seroprevalence and testing in a supplementary wave of the Socio-Economic-Panel conducted predominantly in October–November 2020. Self-collected oral-nasal ...

Skill Downgrading among Refugees and Economic Immigrants in Germany: Evidence from the Syrian Refugee Crisis

Upon arrival to a new country, many immigrants face job downgrading, a phenomenon describing workers being in jobs far below where they would be assigned based on their skills. Downgrading leads to immigrants receiving lower returns to the same skills than natives. The level of downgrading could depend on the type of immigrant and numerous factors. This study examines the determinants of skill downgrading ...

The evolution of educational wage differentials for women and men in Germany, from 1996 to 2019

This paper studies the evolution of three higher education wage differentials from 1996 to 2019 in Germany. We distinguish between degrees from academic universities, degrees from universities of applied sciences, and the master craftsman\craftswoman certificate. The educational reference category is a standard degree within the German vocational education and training system. Based on samples of male ...

Mental health and residential mobility: Does moving during childhood result in worse mental health outcomes during early adulthood?

This study examines the relationship between childhood residential mobility and early adult mental health. Findings from previous research indicate a significant relationship between the two, even when accounting for various confounders. Important confounders include family structure, parental separation, and socio-economic status. This study uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to ...

Household Specialization, Social Norms and the Modern Family

Der Vergleich der deutschen Durchschnittsfamilie im Jahr 2020 mit der fünfzig Jahre früher lässt die Unterschiede deutlich zu Tage treten. Modernen Familien sind diverser und weniger stabil, Fertilitäts und Heiratsraten sind gesunken, die meisten Mütter arbeiten zumindest in Teilzeit und Ansichten über Geschlechterrollen sind zunehmend egalitärer. In Deutschland stieg das Alter der Frauen bei der ersten ...

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 ...