Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Drivers of renewable technology adoption in the household sector

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we undertake a simultaneous assessment of the importance of factors that are individually found to be significant for the adoption of renewable energy systems by households but are not yet tested jointly. These are sociodemographic and housing characteristics, environmental concern, personality traits, and economic factors; i.e. the expected costs of ...

Marriage, Gender, and Class: The Effects of Partner Resources on Unemployment Exit in Germany

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we find that cohabitation accelerates re-employment, whereas marriage increases the prospect of re-employment only for men. More specifically, the partner's labor market resources facilitate re-employment. Although partner income has no effect in absolute terms, unemployed men and women who were formerly minor earners refrain from re-entering ...

The Rich Demystified. A Reply to Bach, Corneo, and Steiner

The Legacy of Surveillance: An Explanation for Social Capital Erosion and the Persistent Economic Disparity between East and West Germany

This paper presents an exemplary case of social capital destruction through state action. We investigate the patterns of economic backwardness in East Germany and put forward a formal model and empirical evidence in favor of an intuitive yet novel conjecture: the differences in the scale and depth of state security penetration of people's private lives as well as of the institutions of state and ...

Language Barriers during the Fieldwork of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees in Germany

The IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees is one of the first large-scale quantitative surveys in Germany focusing on refugees exclusively. It is able to provide valuable insights on the recent cohort of refugees who arrived in Germany as of the year 2013. However, due to the fact that most respondents of the target population are not proficient in German, the research partners who conducted the survey ...

In 2016, around One-Third of People in Germany Donated for Refugees and Ten Percent Helped out on Site—yet Concerns Are Mounting

The presence of refugees in Germany and the challenges their integration poses have preoccupied the public for the past two years. According to the latest data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), many more people in Germany were concerned about migration and xenophobia last year than in 2013. The additional representative results of the Barometer of Public Opinion on Refugees in Germany in 2016 and ...

Direct Evidence on Risk Attitudes and Migration

It has long been hypothesized that individuals' migration propensities depend on their risk attitudes, but the empirical evidence has been limited and indirect. We use newly available data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure directly the relationship between migration and risk attitudes. We find that individuals who are more willing to take risks are more likely to migrate. Our estimates ...

Gender Differences in Life Satisfaction and Social Participation

This paper deals with the effects of social participation activities on life satisfaction. Using the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) for 2010, I present gender specific differences for several social activities, such as club memberships of political, welfare, health or more leisure time orientated groups. These activities have different impacts on male or female satisfaction. While sports and ...

The kids are alright? A note on parental satisfaction in Germany

In social sciences, research of satisfaction presents mixed or negative effects of parental satisfaction (e.g. Powdthavee 2009, Hansen 2012), while recent findings show that socio-economic differences matter (e.g. Myrskylä/Margolis 2014, Pollmann-Schult, 2014). Here, we use long run German panel data with fixed effects regressions and interaction terms to analyze the effects of birth on parental satisfaction. ...

Explaining Age and Gender Differences in Employment Rates: A Labor Supply-Side Perspective

This paper takes a labor supply perspective (neoclassical labor supply, job search) to explain the lower employment rates of older workers and women. The basic rationale is that workers choose non-employment if their reservation wages are larger than the offered wages. Whereas the latter depend on workers’ productivity and firms’ decisions, reservation wages are largely determined by workers’ endowments ...