Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Real Net Worth of Households in Germany Fell between 2003 and 2013

Studies indicating the development of household wealth in Germany are typically based on nominal values and do not take account of price rises and thus the actual purchasing power of those assets. DIW Berlin took inflation into account in a recent evaluation and concluded that the average net worth of households in Germany decreased in real terms by almost 15 percent from 2003 to 2013. This figure, ...

Measuring Cognitive Ability

The assessment of cognitive abilities is critical in large-scale survey studies that aim at elucidating the longitudinal interplay between the individual’s cognitive potential and socio-economic variables. The format of such studies calls for assessment methods that not only can be efficiently administered, but also show a high level of (psychometric) measurement quality. In consideration of recent ...

The Effect of Maternal Education on Offspring's Mental Health

We estimate the causal effect of maternal education on the mental health of mother’s children in late adolescence and adulthood. Theoretical considerations are ambiguous about a causal effect of maternal education on children’s mental health. To identify the causal effect of maternal education, we exploit exogenous variation in maternal years of schooling, caused by a compulsory schooling law reform ...

The effects of works councils on overtime hours

This study analyzes the relation between works councils and overtime hours in Germany. The estimated effects differ considerably in dependence of standard contracted working time. Furthermore, we find differences across the quantiles of the overtime hours distribution and these differences between quantiles also vary between employees of establishment with and without works councils. By considering ...

Compensating disadvantageous life events : social origin differences in the effects of family and sibling characteristics on educational outcomes (dissertation)

This thesis is a collection of four empirical studies which analyze the effects of family and sibling characteristics on educational outcomes. The analysis in all empirical studies is guided by the compensatory effect of social origin hypothesis according to which higher social origin families can reduce the negative impact of disadvantageous characteristics and life events on their children's ...

When Growing Up Without a Parent Does Not Hurt: Parental Separation and the Compensatory Effect of Social Origin

This article investigates how the negative impact of parental separation on children’s educational outcomes varies with social origin. In particular, I test the compensatory class hypothesis which postulates that higher class families compensate the negative effects of disadvantageous life events, such as parental separation. I apply family-fixed effects models to control for unmeasured confounding ...

Does Separation Really Lead Fathers and Mothers to be Less Involved in their Children’s Lives?

Parental separation is a disadvantageous life event with many consequences for the children who experience it. This article investigates the influence of parental separation on father and mother involvement in their children’s lives in adolescence using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and employing family fixed-effects models to control for omitted variable bias. The results ...

Competition in the Family: Inequality between Siblings and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Advantage

Research on educational mobility is concerned with inequalities between families. Differences in innate abilities and parental responses lead, however, to educational differences between siblings. If parental responses vary by family socioeconomic background, within-family inequality can affect between-family inequality (i.e., educational mobility). This study uses data from the German Socio-Economic ...

Legacies of the past: social origin, educational attainment and labour-market outcomes in Germany

This chapter studies the associations among social origin, educational attainment and labour-market outcomes in Germany for cohorts born between 1947 and 1984. Our analysis adds to a large body of studies on social mobility in Germany (e.g. Breen and Luijkx 2007; Grätz 2011; Ishida et al. 1995; Mayer and Aisenbrey 2007; Müller and Pollak 2004). Apart from including data on cohorts younger than those ...

International multidimensional comparisons of inequality in disposable income and access to public goods