Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Surveys: Linking Individual Date to Organizational Data in Life-Course Analysis

Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Surveys. Linking Individual Data to Organizational Data in Life-Course Analysis

This paper starts with three fundamental insights from social science and economics: (1) that the conditions and consequences of individual behavior can only be studied empirically on the basis of longitudinal data, (2) that individual behavior is embedded in social contexts and social aggregates, and (3) that formal organizations – e.g., firms, schools, universities – are becomming more important ...

Principles of the Just Distribution of Benefits and Burdens: The "Basic Social Justice Orientations" Scale for Measuring Order-Related Social Justice Attitudes

The paper introduces a short scale for measuring attitudes to four fundamental principles of the just distribution of benefits and burdens in a society. The Basic Social Justice Orientations (BSJO) scale is an eight-item scale that measures agreement with the equality, equity, need, and entitlement principle. In contrast to comparable other scales that have been used in justice research in the past, ...

Wages in Eastern Germany Still Considered More Unjust Than in the West

Almost 25 years after the fall of the Wall and far more eastern Germans are unhappy with their income than western Germans. In 2013, around 44 percent of employed eastern Germans rated their earnings as unfair compared with approximately one third in western Germany. Although the east-west gap has been diminishing since 2005--to around 12 percent in 2013--this is not because eastern Germans feel that ...

A Factorial Survey on the Justice of Earnings Within the SOEP-Pretest 2008

This research note describes the Factorial Survey and its implementation in the Pretest 2008 of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). The main research objective of this study was to investigate the capability of Factorial Surveys in large population surveys. Therefore, we created a vignette module that was part of the CAPI-questionnaire with 24 descriptions of fulltime employees. Respondents gave ...

The Justice of Earnings in Dual-Earner Households

The rise in female labor market participation and the growth of “atypical” employment arrangements has, over the last few decades, brought about a steadily decreasing percentage of households in which the man is the sole breadwinner, and a rising percentage of dual-earner households. Against this backdrop, the present paper investigates the impact of household contexts in which the traditional male ...

Unjust Divergence in Earnings in Germany? Many believe top executives earn too much

Justice of Wages in Germany and Abroad? An Empirical Investigation (Chapter 55)

This paper deals with empirical studies on peoples’ opinions on justice of wages. Its material focuses on Germany, but it also takes other Western countries into account. There were some variations, but in general, for all societies researched, a majority estimated the distribution of wages to be unjust at the extremes: in their eyes, unskilled workers are paid too little and, even more clearly, executives ...

Perceived Income Justice Depends on the Economy

At least half of all employees in Germany described their wages in all three survey years under consideration here - 2005, 2007, and 2009 - as just. Still, major changes occurred over this period in how people perceived their earnings. Data from the Socio- Economic Panel (SOEP) Study show that after an increase in income dissatisfaction in 2007, the percentage of the population who consider their income ...

The Labour Market Integration of Immigrants in Germany