Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Trust and Control at the Workplace: Evidence from Representative Samples of Employees in Europe

Based on two representative samples of employees, the German Socio Economic Panel and the European Social Survey, we explore the relation between certain measures of control in employment relationships (i. e. working time regulations, use of performance appraisal systems, monitoring by supervisors, autonomy to organize the work) and individuals’ inclination to trust others. Trust is measured by the ...

Bonus Payments, Hierarchy Levels and Tenure: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence

Using data on executive compensation for the German chemical industry, we investigate the relevance of two theoretical approaches that focus on bonuses as part of a long term wage policy of a firm. The first approach argues that explicit bonuses serve as substitutes for implicit career concerns. The second approach claims that bonuses are used as complements to an executive’s internal career. Our data ...

Determinants of Further Training: Evidence for Germany

We explore the relevance and development of further training in private sector firms using the German Socio-Economic Panel, which is a representative sample of German residents. We focus on formal training and explore possible individual and job-based determinants of its incidence. We also show changes over time during a 20-year observation period from 1989 to 2008. Most hypotheses are supported by ...

A Comparative Analysis of Augmented Wealth in Germany and the United States

Research on wealth inequality usually focuses on real and financial assets, while (public) pension wealth receives little attention. This paper provides for the first time evidence on the levels and composition of and inequalities in households’ positions of augmented wealth – the sum of net worth and pension wealth – in two countries with distinct welfare regimes, the United States and Germany. Micro ...

Imputation of Item-Non-Response on Income Questions in the SOEP 1984-2002

Germany's middle class has shrunk: incomes increasingly polarised from 2000 to 2005

The Shrinking German Middle Class - Signs of Long-Term Polarization in Disposable Income?

Country case study--Germany

The Great Recession (GR) of the late 2000s had a significant but fortunately only temporary impact on the German labour market and economy as a whole. By the last quarter of 2010, nominal GDP had already returned to pre-recession levels and unemployment had reached its lowest levels since reunification. Scholars have described this striking resilience of the German labour market as ‘Germany’s jobs ...

Different Contexts, Different Effects? Work Time and Mental Health in the United States and Germany

This paper takes a comparative approach to the topic of work time and health, asking whether weekly work hours matter for mental health. We hypothesize that these relationships differ within the United States and Germany, given the more regulated work time environments within Germany and the greater incentives to work long hours in the United States. We further hypothesize that German women will experience ...

Data in the Field of Adult Education and Lifelong Learning: Present Situation, Improvements and Challenges

Over the last years, political and scientific debates have stressed the growing importance of adult education. Currently important research questions call not only for data sources that collect detailed information on adult education with repeated measurements and in different cohorts, but they should also include data on other life spheres such as education and working histories, partnership and household ...