Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Living Conditions and the Mental Health and Well-being of Refugees: Evidence from a Large-Scale German Survey

Refugees are at an increased risk of mental health problems and low subjective well-being. Living circumstances in the host country are thought to play a vital role in shaping these health outcomes, which, in turn, are prerequisites for successful integration. Using data from a representative survey of 4325 adult refugees who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016, we investigated how different living ...

Marginal College Wage Premiums under Selection into Employment

We identify female long-term wage returns to college education using the educational expansion between 1960–90 in West Germany as exogenous variation for college enrolment. We estimate marginal treatment effects and propose a simple partial identification technique accounting for women selecting into employment due to having a college education. College-educated women are, on average, more than 18 ...

The persistence of subjective well-being: permanent happiness, transitory misery?

This paper disentangles the roles played by state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity in self-assessed happiness. It estimates a dynamic nonlinear model of subjective well-being on longitudinal data, primarily from France, but also from Australia, Germany, and the UK. Life satisfaction is persistent over time, which static models ignore. This persistence is heterogeneous across individuals: it ...

Until death do us part: The codevelopment of life satisfaction in couples preceding the death of one partner

This work aims to integrate previous research perspectives on terminal well-being decline and partner bereavement by investigating the codevelopment of life satisfaction in the years preceding the death of one partner. We analyzed longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (N = 1,450 couples) and applied dyadic multilevel models to estimate both partners’ trajectories of life satisfaction ...

Single mothers' contact frequency with family and non-family members

Soziale Kontakte alleinerziehender Mütter wurden empirisch bisher überwiegend anhand kleiner selektiver Stichproben und im Querschnitt betrachtet. Die Möglichkeit, die Zusammenhänge zu generalisieren, ist nicht zuletzt durch begrenzte Verfügbarkeit geeigneter Längsschnittdaten eingeschränkt. Dieser Artikel greift auf eine der verfügbaren Datenquellen zurück um zu untersuchen, inwiefern Übergänge ins ...

A Matter of Combination? The Influence of Work-family Life Courses on Life Satisfaction at Higher Ages among German Women

This study analyzed the association between work-family life courses and life satisfaction among 2,542 women aged 60–65 years (born between 1920 and 1957) using German SOEP data and ANOVA models. The results are embedded in a description of the specific role of mothers in Germany (as primary caregivers), different theoretical assumptions (from role theories and theories on cumulative advantages and ...

Refugees' religious affiliation, religious practice and social integration

Educational Reproduction in Germany: A Prospective Study Based on Retrospective Data

This study examines educational reproduction of East and West German men and women born between 1930 and 1950. In a prospective design, we study the importance of mobility and fertility pathways of reproduction, considering not only the social reproduction of education as an attribute but also the demographic reproduction of individuals who carry this attribute. Using data from NEPS and SOEP, we introduce ...

Trends in self-rated health among the elderly population in Germany from 1995 to 2015 – the influence of temporal change in leisure time physical activity

Background: Against the backdrop of rising statutory retirement age in Germany, we analyzed time trends in self-rated health (SRH) among the elderly population between 50 and 70 years of age and explored the mediating role of leisure time physical activity (LTPA) on the relationship between time period and self-rated health (SRH). Methods: We used longitudinal survey data (n = 23,161) from a national ...

Opportunities and Constraints of the Partner Market and Educational Assortative Mating

This study aims to determine to what extent the opportunities and restrictions of the partner market influence educational assortative mating. It also analyzes the interplay between the opportunity structure and preferences. Matching district-based partner market indicators to heterosexual couples when they move in together based on the German Socio-Economic Panel, we find strong effects of the opportunity ...