Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Pension Incentives and Early Retirement

In this paper we exploit a cohort-specific pension reform to estimate the labour market effects of changes in the financial incentives to retire. In particular, we analyse the effects of the introduction of cohort-specific deductions for early retirement on female retirement, employment and unemployment. For the empirical analysis we use high-quality administrative data from the German pension insurance. ...

Sexual and Gender Minority (SGM) Research Meets Household Panel Surveys: Research Potentials of the German Socio-Economic Panel and Its Boost Sample of SGM Households

There are numerous challenges to studying structural inequality in sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations, from the difficulty of obtaining a representative sample to issues comparing data across populations. This data brief illustrates how the largest household panel survey in Germany, the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), and its recent nationwide boost sample of SGM households, Sample Q, ...

Does Sports Make People Happier, or Do Happy People More Sports?

We contribute to the happiness literature by analyzing the causal relationship between sports and happiness. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we find a positive correlation between sports participation and reported life satisfaction. This relationship is stronger at younger and older ages than in middle age, and for people in bad health compared to those in average ...

Essays on the Gender- and Part-Time Wage Gap: A Distributional Approach

Childcare Workers Experience Many Stressors and Little Recognition

Childcare workers are essential for both families and society at large, and their working conditions and pay are often a topic of discussion. Using new data spanning until the end of 2019 from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) as well as a special SOEP additional survey in day care centers, this report shows how childcare workers view their occupation, day-to-day work, and pay. According to the data, ...

Self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom: Teacher expectations, teacher feedback and student achievement

This study investigated the link between teacher expectations and student learning, relying on longitudinal data from 64 classrooms and 1026 first-grade students in Germany. Further, based on a subsample of 19 classrooms with 354 students, we explored the mediating role of three characteristics of teacher feedback rated in video-recorded school lessons. The results showed that teacher expectations ...

20 Years of the Riester Pension—Personal Retirement Provision Requires Reform

Introduced 20 years ago as a part of the 2001 pension reform, the Riester pension is meant to function as an essential component of the German pension system with the aim of compensating for decreasing public pensions. However, data collected by the SOEP show that this objective has not yet been achieved. For ten years, use of the Riester pension plan has been stagnating at around 25 percent of the ...

Depression, Neuroticism and 2D:4D Ratio: Evidence from a Large, Representative Sample

A body of literature reports higher rates of depression and neuroticism in female samples compared to male samples. Numerous studies have investigated the role of prenatal sex hormone exposure in this sex difference, using the ratio between the second and fourth digit of the hand (“2D:4D”) as a putative marker. However, the sample sizes of those studies were mostly small and results remained inconclusive. ...

Individual and social predictors of smoking and obesity: A panel study in Germany

This is a longitudinal study of changes in smoking behaviour as well as becoming overweight/obese (OW/OB) and the strength of their association with personal factors such as self-control, mental health, and socioeconomic status (SES) versus their connection with the behaviour of other household members. Furthermore, we investigate that in terms of roles within a household, who is more vulnerable towards ...

Do Higher Educated People Feel Better in Everyday Life? Insights From a Day Reconstruction Method Study

Past research has shown a positive association between education and well-being. Much of this research has focused on the cognitive component of well-being (i.e., life satisfaction) as outcome. On the other hand, the affective component, that is, how often and intensively people experience positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) in their everyday lives, has received far less attention. Therefore, ...