Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The impact of COVID-19 government responses on remittances in Latin American countries

Workers' remittances declined sharply as the COVID-19 pandemic spread in the first half of 2020, rebounding in the second half. This paper analyses the impact of containment and economic support measures on remittances sent to Latin America during 2019–2020 using a gravity model estimated with the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator (PPML). Results show that containment measures in receiving ...

Leaving legacies and liabilities: The distribution of wealth at death

This paper leverages novel administrative data on terminal wealth in Vienna to show that Gini indices of wealth inequality at death exceed unity, with 20-30% of decedents leaving behind debt. We analyze the drivers of this distribution, finding that the drivers of terminal wealth (distribution) are different from determinants of wealth (inequality) among the living. Lifecycle effects have limited explanatory ...

Ethnische Bildungsungleichheiten

Dass Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund im deutschen Bildungssystem benachteiligt sind, hat mit kulturellen Faktoren wenig zu tun. Entscheidend ist ihre soziale Stellung. Dies und vieles mehr erklären der Soziologe Jörg Dollmann und die Soziologin Cornelia Kristen in einem schriftlichen Interview.

Is the First Language a Resource, an Obstacle, or Irrelevant for Language Minority Students’ Education?

Successful integration into the education system is of major importance for the future prospects of immigrants and their children as well as for the social cohesion and viability of the receiving societies. Language is generally viewed as an important aspect of this integration. Whereas there is widespread agreement that the language of the residence country (L2) is crucial for students’ educational ...

Big Five facets and religiosity: Three large-scale, cross-cultural, theory-driven, and process-attentive tests

How relevant are the Big Five in predicting religiosity? Existing evidence suggests that the Big Five domains account for only a small amount of variance in religiosity. Some researchers have claimed that the Big Five domains are too broad and not sufficiently specific to explain much religiosity variance. Accordingly, they speculated that the more specific Big Five facets should predict religiosity ...

Loneliness in Germany: Low-income earners at highest risk of loneliness

Loneliness poses a serious health risk: Along with negatively impacting life quality, it can even shorten the life span. This Weekly Report investigates loneliness in Germany using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data from 2021 on loneliness. The analyses highlight the prevalence of three facets of loneliness (aloneness, isolation, exclusion) as well as regional differences and high-risk groups. The results ...

SHARE Wave 9 Questionnaire Adaptations with a Special Focus on the End-of-Life Interview

Heating and Electricity Expenses: Saving Incentives Not Impacting Basic Income Recipients

Basic income benefits cover recipients' actual heating expenses as long as they are not unusually high. In contrast, their electricity expenses are only covered via a lump sum at the standard rate. Thus, basic income recipients have weaker incentives for reducing their heating expenses than for reducing their electricity expenses. Using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data, it can be seen that basic ...

Delayed effects on migration intentions in an information provision experiment in Ghan

We report experimental results from Ghana, where treated subjects received information on regional income differentials. We do not see an effect on migration intentions directly after the intervention, but the effect of the treatment unfolds over time. Eighteen months later, subjects assigned to receive income information are on average significantly less likely to express enthusiasm for moving to ...

The Challenged Sense of Belonging Scale (CSBS)—a validation study in English, Arabic, and Farsi/Dari among refugees and asylum seekers in Germany

This study introduces and investigates the validity of a brief scale measuring a challenged sense of belonging. The sense of belonging as well as challenges to this sense are important, albeit neglected aspects of social integration and of significance to migration and refugee studies as well as to virtually all other social science contexts. Assessing a challenged or eroded sense of belonging provides ...