Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Transformation Research and the Longue Durée of 1989: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Data

In recent years, historians have increasingly looked at social science data in their search for sources to study the transformation period. Researchers hope that a secondary analysis of this data will expand the existing sources. This expansion promises new perspectives, while simultaneously bringing new methodological challenges to the discipline. This article deals with both: 1. It uses a history ...

Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence

Inequality of opportunity strikes when two children with the same academic performance are sent to different quality schools because their parents differ in socio-economic status. Based on a novel dataset for Germany, we demonstrate that children are significantly less likely to enter the academic track if they come from low socio-economic status (SES) families, even after conditioning on prior measures ...

In a Lonely Place: Investigating Regional Differences in Loneliness

Loneliness has traditionally been studied on the individual level. This study is one of the first to systematically describe and explain differences in loneliness on a fine-grained regional level. Using data from the nationally representative German Socio-EconomicPanel Study (N = 17,602), we mapped the regional distribution of loneliness across Germany and examined whether regional differences in loneliness ...

Personality traits in Southeast Asia - Evidence from rural Thailand and Vietnam

The aim of this paper is twofold: First, we implement and validate the famous Big Five model on personality traits in a rural developing country setting. Second, we provide micro level evidence that examines personality traits of rural households in Thailand and Vietnam. Using new representative individual level data, our results show that the Big Five model can be applied in a rural setting. Moreover, ...

The Big Five model in rural Southeast Asia: Validation, stability, and its role in household income

Objective: We investigate the applicability of the Big Five model in rural Southeast Asia and thereby challenge recent concerns about the validity of the model in developing countries. Method: We use a novel data set on personality traits from rural Thailand and Vietnam (N = 3811 individuals). In our analysis, we (i) assess the factor structure of the data, (ii) test the internal consistency of the ...

In Sickness and in Health? Health Shocks and Relationship Breakdown: Empirical Evidence from Germany

Aus ökonomischer Sicht können Ehen und langjährige Partnerschaften als informeller Versicherungsmechanismus verstanden werden. Dieser implizite Versicherungsvertrag ist jedoch nicht vollständig durchsetzbar, da jeder Partner die Beziehung beenden kann, z.B. auch dann wenn seine Unterstützung im Falle eines negativen Lebensereignisses benötigt wird. Ein Beispiel eines solchen negativen Lebensereignisses ...

Unemployment and Housework in Couples: Task-Specific Differences and Dynamics Over Time

Objective: The authors tested competing hypotheses about the effects of unemployment on couples' division of housework and total household production. Background: Gender-neutral and gender-based theories make opposing predictions on the reactions of couples. Few previous studies have tested these predictions using longitudinal data. This study extends research by examining how the effects of unemployment ...

Gert G. Wagner Recommends "Homo Ignorans: Deliberately Choosing Not to Know" by Ralph Hertwig and Christoph Engel

Are there gender differences in associations of effort–reward imbalance at work with self-reported doctor-diagnosed depression? Prospective evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

Purpose: Cohort studies established elevated risks of depression among employees experiencing psychosocial stress at work, defined by ‘job strain’ or ‘effort–reward imbalance’ (ERI). Yet, conflicting evidence exists on whether the strength of these associations varies by gender. We explore this question in a nationally representative sample of working women and men where work stress (ERI) was related ...

The German feed-in tariff revisited - an empirical investigation on its distributional effects

In the context of the German energy transition, the financial burdens associated with subsidies for renewable energies have increased substantially in recent years. These costs are passed on to consumers in the form of the EEG levy as a component of the electricity price. However, some households benefit from owning photovoltaic (PV) systems because they receive the corresponding feed-in tariffs. In ...