Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Intergenerational Effects of Unemployment: How Parental Unemployment Affects Educational Transitions in Germany

This paper studies the intergenerational effects of parental unemployment on students’ transitions after completing upper secondary education. Besides estimating the average treatment effect of parental unemployment on transition outcomes, we also aim to identify the economic, psychological or other intra-familial mechanisms that might be responsible for any adverse impact of parental unemployment ...

Data Sharing as a Social Dilemma: Influence of the Researcher's Personality

It is widely acknowledged that data sharing has great potential for scientific progress. However, so far making data available has little impact on a researcher’s reputation. Thus, data sharing can be conceptualized as a social dilemma. In the presented study we investigated the influence of the researcher's personality within the social dilemma of data sharing. The theoretical background was ...

Undoing Gender with Institutions. Lessons from the German Division and Reunification

Using the 41-year division of Germany as a natural experiment, we show that the GDR’s gender-equal institutions created a culture that has undone the male breadwinner norm and its consequences. Since reunification, East Germany still differs from West Germany not only by a higher female contribution to household income, but also because East German women can earn more than their husbands without having ...

Math, Girls and Socialism

This paper argues that the socialist episode in East Germany, which constituted a radical experiment in gender equality in the labor market and other instances, has left persistent tracks on gender norms. We focus on one of the most resilient and pervasive gender gaps in modern societies: mathematics. Using the German division as a natural experiment, we show that the underperformance of girls in math ...

Attrition of Households and Individuals in Panel Surveys

Attrition is mostly caused by not contacted or refusing sample members. On one hand it is well-known that reasons to attrite due to non-contact are different from those that are due to refusal. On the other hand does non-contact most probably affect household attrition, while refusal can be effective on both households and individuals. In this article, attrition on both the household and (conditional ...

The working class left behind? The class gap in life satisfaction in Germany and Switzerland over the last decades

The 1990s and 2000s were a gloomy period for Germany’s working class, hit by mass unemployment, welfare retrenchment and wage stagnation. We examine whether the growing economic disparity between the top and the bottom of Germany’s class structure was accompanied by a widening class gap in life satisfaction. We analyse whether there is a social class gradient in life satisfaction and whether, over ...

Priorities may drive happiness

Combining family and full-time work

Consumer Bankruptcy: A Fresh Start

Family Separation and Refugee Mental Health: a Network Perspective

How do the structure and relational features of family networks affect refugees’ mental health after migration, particularly when refugees are geographically separated from their family? Using the first wave of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees, which is representative of the population of refugees who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016, this study finds that the size of the nuclear family ...