Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Three Essays on the Economics of Education and Inequality

The economic research potentials of the German Socio-Economic Panel study

We provide a concise introduction to a household-panel data infrastructure that provides the international research community with longitudinal data of private households in Germany since 1984: the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We demonstrate the comparative strength of the SOEP data in answering economically -relevant questions by highlighting its diverse and impactful applications throughout ...

Do Ethnic Networks Ameliorate Education–Occupation Mismatch?

Abstract The question to what extent ethnic networks affect occupational mismatch has so far been overlooked. This paper exploits supraregional variation in ethnic composition in Germany and shows that a one standard deviation increase in the share of the own ethnic group per zip code significantly reduces the years of overqualification for females, by 0.27 years. For males, neither the foreign share ...

Migration and Happiness: Evidence from Germany

With a shrinking population and a rising dependency ratio, Germany needs young migrants, willing and able to integrate with the German society and actively participate in its economic progress. In order to devise successful immigration and integration policies, policymakers should be aware of the factors affecting migrants’ intentions and decisions. In this paper we explore the impact of different ...

Gender Identity and Wives' Labor Market Outcomes in West and East Germany between 1984 and 2016

We exploit the natural experiment of German reunification in 1990 to investigate if the institutional regimes of the formerly socialist (rather gender-equal) East Germany and the capitalist (rather gender-traditional) West Germany shaped different gender identity prescriptions of family breadwinning. We use data for three periods between 1984 and 2016 from the representative German Socio-Economic Panel ...

Immigrants’ First Names and Perceived Discrimination: A Contribution to Understanding the Integration Paradox

Many studies have shown that better-educated immigrants more frequently report perceived discrimination in the host country than less-educated immigrants. Two different explanations for this discrimination paradox, which is a subcase of the so-called integration paradox, are discussed in the literature. First, with increasing integration, immigrants’ sensitivity to discrimination processes changes. ...

Assessment of German Public Attitudes toward Health Communications with Varying Degrees of Scientific Uncertainty Regarding COVID-19

This survey study assesses attitudes of the German public regarding COVID-19 health communications with varying degrees of scientific uncertainty.

Is Healthy Neuroticism Associated with Chronic Conditions? A Coordinated Integrative Data Analysis

Current literature suggests that neuroticism is positively associated with maladaptive life choices, likelihood of disease, and mortality. However, recent research has identified circumstances under which neuroticism is associated with positive outcomes. The current project examined whether “healthy neuroticism”, defined as the interaction of neuroticism and conscientiousness, was associated with the ...

Is Occupational Licensing More Beneficial for Women than for Men? The Case of Germany, 1993/2015

This article analyzes the relation of gender wage inequality to occupational licensing in Germany in 1993 and 2015. We show that the very particular German licensing system and strong gender segregation lead to an overrepresentation of women in licensed occupations. We further investigate, whether both genders benefit equally from licensing in terms of wages. Finally, we study whether both women’s ...

The pattern of educational inequality - The contribution of family background on levels of education over time and across four countries

This article analyses the pattern of inequality across levels of education and its evolution over time from a cross-national comparative perspective. We employ a previously disregarded approach of sibling correlations to measure how the contribution of the total family background differs across achieved levels of education. We compare successive birth cohorts in Finland, Sweden, Germany, and the U.S. ...