Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Do Women Respond to Changes in Family Policy? A Quasi-Experimental Study of the Duration of Mothers’ Employment Interruptions in Germany

Based on a sequence of policy changes in Germany’s parental leave programme, the article uses an interrupted time-series design to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between mothers’ labour force behaviour and family policy. Using event history modelling techniques and 1984–2010 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, the analysis shows that mothers have strongly responded to various ...

Analyzing the Employment Status with Panel Data from the GSOEP. A Comparison of the MECOSA and the GEE1 Approach for Marginal Models

The Generalised Estimating Equations - A Comparison of Procedures Available in Commercial Statistical Software Packages

The Generalised Estimating Equations (GEE) proposed by Liang and Zeger (1986) and Zeger and Liang (1986) have found considerable attention in the last decade (for an overview see e.g. Ziegler, and Blettner, 1998). Several self-made programs for solving the GEE are available. This paper presents a comparison of three GEE procedures that are already available in SAS PROC GENMOD, STATA procedure XTGEE ...

The Vocabulary and Overclaiming Test (VOC-T)

The present research aimed at constructing a questionnaire measuring overclaiming tendencies (VOC-T-bias) as an indicator of self-enhancement. An approach was used which also allows estimation of a score for vocabulary knowledge, the accuracy index (VOC-T-accuracy), using signal detection theory. For construction purposes, an online study was conducted with N = 1,176 participants. The resulting questionnaire, ...

What can we learn from intentions data about future behavior - the case of East-Germany after reunification

Spatial structure counts: the relevance of regional labour-market conditions for educational transitions to vocational training

Regional contextual factors can have a crucial impact on educational attainment processes of young adults and subsequently on individual life chances. This paper develops a systematic approach of the spatial references of such contextual settings. The flexible concept allows combining aggregate data for configurations of regional units in order to empirically determine the spatial extension of relevant ...

Flexible Modelling of Duration of Unemployment Using Functional Hazard Models and Penalized Splines: A Case Study Comparing Germany and the UK

The intention of this paper is to demonstrate the flexibility and capacity of penalized spline smoothing as estimation routine for modelling duration time data. We investigate the unemployment behaviour in Germany and the UK between 1995 and 2005 based on data from national panel studies. Functional duration time models are used to investigate the dynamics of covariate effects. The focus of our analysis ...

Parental health and child behavior: evidence from parental health shocks

This study examines the importance of parental health in the development of child behavior during early childhood. Our analysis is based on child psychometric measures from a longitudinal German dataset, which tracks mothers and their newborns up to age six. We identify major changes in parental health (shocks) and control for a variety of initial characteristics of the child including prenatal conditions. ...

Exploring the possibilities and boundaries of survey data for the analysis of wealth and wealth transfers

In Germany, a flagrant lack of official register or tax data for scholarly use leads to a situation wherein survey data is the last remaining source of evidence about the distribution of wealth. Two of the four research chapters in this thesis aim to evaluate methods for the improvement of available survey data. The other two contributions discuss the possibilities and limitations of survey data for ...

Significant Statistical Uncertainty over Share of High Net Worth Households

The analyses of wealth inequality based on survey data usually suffer from undercoverage of the upper percentiles of the very wealthy. Yet given this group’s substantial share of total net worth, it is of particular relevance. As no tax data are available in Germany, the largest fortunes can only be simulated using “rich lists.” For example, combining the Forbes list, with its approximately 50 German ...