Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The set-point theory of well-being has serious limitations: SOEP results challenge the dominant theory

Individual Determinants of Recalls

Non-Take-Up of Student Financial Aid: A Microsimulation for Germany

This paper estimates the percentage of students who do not take up their federal need-based student financial aid entitlements and sheds light on determinants of this behavior. Against the background that educational mobility in Germany is low although extensive student financial aid for needy students is available, it is crucial to know whether students assert their claims for student aid at all. ...

Social Mobility in the 20th Century: Class Mobility and Occupational Change in the United States and Germany

Based on a novel class scheme and a unique compilation of German and American data, this book reveals that intergenerational class mobility increased over most of the past century. While country differences in intergenerational mobility are surprisingly small, gender, regional, racial and ethnic differences were initially large but declined over time. At the end of the 20th century, however, mobility ...

Class mobility across three generations in the U.S. and Germany

Based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Socio-economic Panel, we study the class mobility of three concurrent generations in the U.S. and Germany. We find that, in both countries, the grandfathers’ class is directly associated with their grandchildren's social position. We propose three possible mechanisms which could explain the observed multigenerational mobility patterns. ...

The Aggregate Effects of the Hartz Reforms in Germany

This paper quantifies the impact of the Hartz reforms on matching efficiency, using monthly SOEP gross worker flows (1983-2009). We show that, until the early 2000s, close to 60% of changes in the unemployment rate are due to changes in the inflow rate (job separation). On the contrary, since the implementation of the reforms in the mid-2000s, the importance of the outflow rate (job finding) has been ...

The ins and outs of German unemployment: a transatlantic perspective

This article decomposes fluctuations in the German unemployment rate into changes in inflows (job separation) and outflows (job finding). For this purpose, we construct and examine monthly labour market transition rates from the West German sample of the SOEP (and the CPS) for the period 1984–2009. We explicitly take account of the low level of labour market transition rates in Germany. Our article ...

Retirement Expectations in Germany—Towards Rising Social Inequality?

In the last 20 years, German policy makers have reformed the pension system and the labor market with the aim of prolonging working life. As a consequence, older workers’ employment rate and average retirement age rose. In addition to the actual behavior of today’s retiree cohorts, the reforms also influence the expected retirement age of future pensioners, the development of which will be investigated ...

Wife or Frau, Women Still Do Worse: A Comparison of Men and Women in the United States and Germany after Union Dissolutions in the 1990s and 2000s

Labor Earnings and Household Income Mobility in Reunified Germany: A Comparison of the Eastern and Western States