Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Longitudinal bidirectional associations between personality and becoming a leader

Objective: Leaders differ in their personalities from non-leaders. However, when do these differences emerge? Are leaders “born to be leaders” or does their personality change in preparation for a leadership role and due to increasing leadership experience? Method: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we examined personality differences between leaders (N = 2683 leaders, women: n ...

Air Pollution Affects Decision-Making: Evidence from the Ballot Box

This paper studies the effect of air pollution on voting outcomes. We use data from 60 federal and state elections in Germany from 2000 to 2018 and exploit plausibly exogenous fluctuations in ambient air pollution within counties across election dates. Higher air pollution on election day shifts votes away from incumbent parties and towards opposition parties. An increase in the concentration of particulate ...

Personality stability and change: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies

Past research syntheses provided evidence that personality traits are both stable and changeable throughout the lifespan. However, early meta-analytic estimates were constrained by a relatively small universe of longitudinal studies, many of which tracked personality traits in small samples over moderate time periods using measures that were only loosely related to contemporary trait models such as ...

Good Bye Lenin Revisited: East-West Preferences Three Decades After Reunification

In this paper, we document that living under Communism vs. Capitalism has lasting effects on preferences for a strong government. Relying on the natural experiment of German reunification and extending the analysis of Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln (2007), we show that East Germans still have stronger preferences for redistribution than West Germans 27 years after reunification. While convergence of preferences ...

Did Immigrants Perceive More Job Insecurity during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic? Evidence from German Panel Data

Immigrants have been affected more than native-born ethnic majority populations by the negative economic consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This contribution examines whether they have also experienced higher levels of perceived job insecurity, reflected in a differential increase in financial concerns and the fear of job loss during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This empirical study employs the SOEP-CoV ...

The Determinants of Population Self-Control

This paper demonstrates that structural factors can shape people's self-control. We study the determinants of adult self-control using population-representative data and exploiting two sources of quasi-experimental variation-Germany's division and compulsory schooling reforms. We find that former East Germans have substantially higher levels of self-control than West Germans and provide evidence ...

Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Benefit Receipt: Evidence from Germany

We study the intergenerational transmission of welfare receipt in Germany. We first describe the correlation of welfare receipt experienced in the parental household and subsequent own welfare receipt of young adults. In a second step, we investigate whether the observed correlations reflect causal effects using the Gottschalk (1996) approach and a family fixed effects estimation. We take advantage ...

Mortality, severe disability and long-term care in Germany: recent trends, differences and determinants

For better or for worse mental health? The role of family networks in exogamous unions

This study tests whether being in an exogamous union affects older individual's family networks, and whether associations between exogamy and mental health reported in previous studies operate through changes in family ties and differ by gender. We focus on individuals aged 60 or above in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study between 2002 and 2016. We describe demographic and family characteristics ...

Emotions and Risk Attitudes

Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people's emotions over time predicts changes in risk attitudes. Using a large-panel dataset, I identify happiness, anger, and fear as significant correlates of within-person changes in risk attitudes. Robustness checks ...