Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

All you need is love? Trade shocks, inequality, and risk sharing between partners

A large literature suggests that growing international trade is among the drivers of rising labor earnings inequality within countries. We contribute to this literature by studying the distributional effects of Germany’s trade integration with China and Eastern Europe. We provide evidence that the trade shock explains 5–18% of the rise in earnings inequality between individual workers. However, when ...

Is There a Trade-off Between Job Security and Wages in Germany and the UK?

Individual Overtime Functions With Double Correction For Selectivity Bias

Job Changes and Wages (Chapter 7)

All Goes Faster but Lasts Longer: Computer Work and Overtime Work

Unpaid overtime, the use of personal computers and wage differentials

Is There a Varying Unexplained Gender Wage Gap in Germany?

The nonlinear link between height and wages in Germany, 1985-2004

Based on data of the German Socio-Economic Panel, this article investigates the relationship between height and wages by gender. Unlike previous investigations, which have been limited to an examination of linear effects, this one finds that height influences on wages are curvilinear, and more so for men than for women. More specifically, it finds that women who are shorter than average and men who ...

Are Tall People Less Risk Averse than Others?

This paper examines the question of whether risk aversion of prime-age workers is negatively correlated with human height to a statistically significant degree. A variety of estimation methods, tests and specifications yield robust results that permit one to answer this question in the affirmative. Hausman-Taylor panel estimates, however, reveal that height effects disappear if personality traits and ...

Health and Body Mass Index: No Simple Relationship

Many studies have shown that obesity is a serious health problem for our society. Empirical analyses often neglect a number of methodological issues and relevant influences on health. This paper investigates empirically whether neglecting these items leads to systematically different estimates. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this study derives the following results. (1) Many combinations ...