Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Occupational and social integration of immigrant groups in Germany

Religion and work: Micro evidence from contemporary Germany

Few theories in the social sciences have gained more widespread acceptance than Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism—despite a lack of conclusive empirical evidence. At the core of Weber’s theory lies a connection between Protestantism and attitudes toward work. Using micro-data from contemporary Germany, this paper investigates the impact of Protestantism on economic outcomes ...

Sector Surcharges for Temporary Agency Workers in Germany: A Way Out of the Low-Wage Sector?

Sector-specific surcharge collective labor agreements between the bargaining partner in the staffing industry allow for a reduction of wage gaps between agency workers and permanent staff in case of long-term job assignments to user companies. Stepwise surcharges up to 50% after a surcharge-free period between four and six weeks gradually close the wage gap for temporary agency workers in nine industries. ...

American and German Mothers´ Child Care Choice - Does Policy Matter?

Improvements and Future Challenges for the Research Infrastructure in the Field of “Preschool Education”

Happiness and altruism within the extended family

We propose a direct measure of altruism between parents and adult children, using survey data on happiness from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 2000–2004. The question of altruism within families has policy relevance, for example, to understand whether public transfers crowd out private ones. Previous empirical evidence, based on observed transfer behavior, has failed to establish a clear ...

Is Posner right? An empirical test of the Posner argument for transferring health spending from old women to old men

Posner (Aging and old age, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995) proposes the redistribution of health spending from old women to old men to equalize life expectancy. His argument is based on the assumption that the woman’s utility is higher if her husband is alive. Using self-reported satisfaction measures from a long-running German panel survey, the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), the present ...

How working hours influence the life satisfaction of childless men and women, fathers and mothers in Germany

This paper uses the German Socio-Economic Panel to show that fathers – and to a lesser degree childless men and women, are most satisfied with life when working full-time or longer. In contrast, whether mothers spend more or less hours in employment hardly affects their life satisfaction. The rational maximization of income as postulated by family economics cannot explain these results, as they are ...

Income Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Unrelated Between Countries, Associated Within Countries Over Time

This article shows for the first time that people are less satisfied when inequality in their country is higher than before, but not when inequality in their country is higher than in another country. It distinguishes this between- and within-country effect of inequality on life satisfaction by using hybrid regressions with the World Values Survey, the British Household Panel Study, the Australian ...

Experimental Evidence of the Effect of Monetary Incentives on Cross‐Sectional and Longitudinal Response: Experiences from the Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP)

The paper gives an overview of two experiments implemented in the German Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP) considering the effect of monetary incentives on cross‐sectional and longitudinal response propensities. We conclude that the overall effects of monetary incentives on response rates are positive compared to the "classic" SOEP setting, where a charity lottery ticket is offered as an incentive. ...