Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Time Preferences and Overconfident Beliefs: Evidence from Germany

This paper investigates if and how time preferences are related to beliefs regarding one’s own future outcomes. We measure overconfident beliefs using the difference between an individual’s expected position and their observed percentile in the distribution of monthly gross wages one year after our survey. Our regression exercises link this bias measure to information about patience, conditioning on ...

Information frictions, belief updating and internal migration: Evidence from Ghana and Uganda

Information frictions about benefits of migration can lead to inefficient migration choices. We study the effects of randomly assigned information treatments concerning regional income differentials in Ghana and Uganda to explore participants’ belief updating and changes in internal migration intentions, destination preferences, and actual migration. Treated participants prefer higher income destinations, ...

Hospital construction and emergency waiting time: evidence from Nicaragua

We investigate the impact of a large new public hospital on directly observed waiting times in emergency departments of other public hospitals in Nicaragua. Using a difference-in-differences design, we estimate a significant decrease in waiting time by 42% or 10.1?minutes in nearby hospitals compared to hospitals that are further away. The waiting time reduction is largest for nearby hospitals specialised ...

Adolescent Sports Participation, Social Skills and Attitudes, and the School-to-Work Transition

This paper investigates the hypothesis to which extent informal learning activities of youths during leisure contribute to shaping educational attainment as well as social and career aspirations. Specifically, we analyze the determinants of participating in sports during adolescence and the effects on educational attainment and youths' assessments of the determinants of social success and important ...

Fertility decisions and children opportunity costs: A panel study for Germany

This paper investigates the dilemma between family and career faced by women due to the high opportunity costs of children, and the impact of “family friendly” public policies on both fertility and labour market participation in Germany. For this purpose, we propose an original lifecycle model with endogenous wages, fertility, female labour supply and child care decisions. We apply the model using ...

Testing a One-Item Risk Measure to Predict Alameda Seven Health Behaviors in the Republic of Korea

Changes in emotional problems, hyperactivity and conduct problems in moderate to late preterm children and adolescents born between 1958 and 2002 in the United Kingdom

Background: Preterm birth is a risk factor for the development of emotional and behavioural problems in childhood and adolescence. Given the substantial improvements in neonatal care across decades, it has been expected that the difference in emotional problems, hyperactivity, and conduct problems between moderate to late preterm (MLPT) and full term (FT) children and adolescents have declined in recent ...

Problems in peer relationships and low engagement in romantic relationships in preterm born adolescents: effects of maternal warmth in early childhood

This study examined whether maternal warmth in early childhood moderates the association between preterm birth and problems in peer relationships and low engagement in romantic relationships in adolescence. We studied 9193 individuals from the Millennium Cohort Study in the United Kingdom, 99 (1.1%) of whom were born very preterm (VPT; < 32 weeks of gestation) and 629 (6.8%) moderate-to-late preterm ...

Entrepreneurial worries: Self-employment and potential loss of well-being

The relationship between self-employment and life satisfaction has been shown to be heterogeneous in the literature. This paper analyzes a channel through which lower well-being can come about for the self-employed, namely, their worries about their business (“entrepreneurial worries”). Using a two-way fixed effects estimator on German panel data (1984–2020), I find no overall effect of becoming self-employed ...

Personality and Cultural Income Differences Shape the Life Satisfaction Gap Between Aging Immigrants and Natives in Europe

The present study examined the size and possible sources of life satisfaction differences between immigrants and natives in a sample of over 55,000 adults (aged 50+ years) across 16 European countries and Israel. Consistent with theory and prior research, immigrants reported lower life satisfaction than natives on average, while the size of the life satisfaction gap varied substantially across individuals ...