Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Are the Losers of Communism the Winners of Capitalism? The Effects of Conformism in the GDR on Transition Success

Following the fall of the Iron Curtain it was important for the acceptance of the new economic and political system that the former Communist elites did not maintain their privileges, and that protesters, who helped to overturn the old system, improved their situation. With newly available panel data on East Germany’s socialist past, the German Democratic Republic, we analyze how former Communist elites, ...

Hartz and Minds: Happiness Effects of Reforming an Employment Agency

Since the labor market reforms around 2005, known as the Hartz reforms, Germany has experienced declining unemployment rates. However, little is known about the reforms’ effect on individual life satisfaction of unemployed workers. This study applies difference-in-difference estimations and finds a decrease in life satisfaction after the reforms that is more pronounced for male unemployed in west Germany. ...

Food, classed? Social inequality and diet: Understanding stratified meat consumption patterns in Germany

Based on a complementary mixed-methods design, the dissertation sheds light on the relationship between meat consumption practices and consumers’ socioeconomic position. In a first step, two large-scale data sets, the German Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichprobe (EVS) 2013 and the Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) 2016, are used to establish empirical relationships between meat consumption practices and consumers’ ...

Do Adult Men and Women in Same-Sex Relationships Have Weaker Ties to Their Parents?

Using a national sample of people in same-sex relationships (N = 843) and different-sex relationships (N = 510) in the Netherlands, we examine the frequently discussed but infrequently tested hypothesis of weaker intergenerational ties between parents and their adult daughters and sons in same-sex relationships. We also test hypotheses linking the strength of these ties to gender differences and the ...

Measuring Housing Costs and Housing Affordability Using SOEP: An Example Applied to Older Households

This paper explores the methodological issues to take into account when using SOEP as a database for calculating a measure of housing costs and housing affordability. For this purpose, we focus on the evolution of housing costs for households headed by elderly people between 1998 and 2018. Our review yields two clear conclusions: (1) that SOEP represents a valuable source of data for calculating household ...

Family Life During Corona (Version: 26 June 2020)

Social Integration of Refugees Is Improving

Five years ago, almost a million people came to Germany seeking refuge. Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to public concern over such a large influx of refugees with her well-known saying, “Wir schaffen das” (We can do this!). Much has happened since then. As this report shows, the German population’s concerns over immigration have been decreasing since 2016. Nevertheless, refugees are increasingly ...

Higher Order Risk Preferences: New Experimental Measures, Determinants and Field Behavior

We use a novel method to elicit and measure higher order risk preferences (prudence and temperance) in an experiment with 658 adolescents. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that higher order risk preferences - particularly prudence - are strongly related to adolescents' field behavior, including their financial decision making, eco-friendly behavior, and health status, including addictive ...

Millionaires under the Microscope: Data Gap on Top Wealth Holders Closed; Wealth Concentration Higher than Presumed

Individuals with assets in the millions of euros have been underrepresented in population surveys and accordingly little has been known about them. As a result, the full extent of wealth concentration in Germany was unknown. To close the existing data gap, the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) inte- grated a special sample in which individuals with high assets are overrepresented. New calculations using ...

LGBTQI* People on the Labor Market: Highly Educated, Frequently Discriminated Against

Societal acceptance of the LGBTQI* people has greatly improved over the past decades in Germany and legal equal treatment on the labor market has been improved by the General Equal Treatment Act (Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz, AGG). However, about 30 percent of those who identify as LGBTQI* report experiencing discrimination in their work life, according to the results of a survey conducted by ...