Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Risk Attitudes of U.S. Farmers

I compare the distribution of risk attitudes of farm owners in the United States to nonfarm business owners and the general population using a measure of risk tolerance collected from national surveys. I find that farmers are significantly more tolerant of risk than the general population, though they are significantly less tolerant of risk than nonfarm business owners. Once demographic differences ...

Risk-attitude selection bias in subject pools for experiments involving neuroimaging and blood samples

To what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income aquisition among Citizens?

Measuring Income Insecurity: Analysis of Income Data from the United States, Britain and Germany

This paper seeks to measure and compare income insecurity in the United States, Great Britain and Germany using household income data from the Cross National Equivalence File (CNEF). As definitive techniques for measuring insecurity are yet to be established we present an explorative methodology based upon the volatility of incomes. Though imperfect, the method is well established in the fields of ...

Effects of Personality on the Transition into Caregiving

Recent research has emphasized the critical role of personality in the caregiving situation, but not much is known about how individual differences shape the transitions into and out of caregiving. Based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, N= 14,495), we explored how personality is associated with adopting and maintaining the caregiving role. The results revealed that individuals ...

Probing Birth-Order Effects on Narrow Traits Using Specification-Curve Analysis

The idea that birth-order position has a lasting impact on personality has been discussed for the past 100 years. Recent large-scale studies have indicated that birth-order effects on the Big Five personality traits are negligible. In the current study, we examined a variety of more narrow personality traits in a large representative sample ( n = 6,500-10,500 in between-family analyses; n = 900-1,200 ...

Inequality of Personal Income in the Enlarged EU: The Role of the Welfare States, Regional Cohesion Policies and Economic Integration

The spatial structure of income inequality in the enlarged EU

Data Bases and Statistical Systems: Sociology

As a rule, core databases contain quantitative survey data. Traditionally, qualitative data, for example, ethnographic field notes or transcripts of group discussions and interviews, have not been made available for secondary analysis. This is slowly changing, and a number of data archives in Europe, Australia, and the US are working on the archiving of qualitative data. Quantitative social science ...

Perceived Economic Uncertainty and Fertility: Evidence From a Labor Market Reform

Whereas in theory individuals tend to postpone fertility decisions in times of economic uncertainty, empirical evidence on that question is scarce. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (N=4,548), the authors estimated the effect of economic concerns on the probability of becoming pregnant in the next year. They exploited exogenous variation in economic concerns induced by the announcement ...