Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Trade union membership and sickness absence: Evidence from a sick pay reform

In 1996, statutory sick pay was reduced for private sector workers in Germany. Using the empirical observation that trade union members are dismissed less often than non-members, we construct a theoretical model to predict how absence behaviour will respond to the sick pay reform. We show that union members may have stronger incentives (1) to be absent and (2) to react to the cut in sick pay. In the ...

Automobile access, peer effects and happiness

While happiness research in transportation is an emerging topic, this is the first study that uses the German SOEP 2003 data to study the role of peer effects in automobile access on self reported subjective well-being following the approach by Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2005). Defining peers based on age, education and location, we find that the peer’s average automobile availability has a statistically ...

Revisiting the complementarity between education and training – the role of job tasks and firm effects

This paper addresses the question to what extent the strong positive correlation between education and training can be attributed to differences in individual-, job- and firm-specific characteristics. The novelty of this paper is to analyze previously unconsidered characteristics, in particular, job tasks and firm-fixed effects. The results show that once job tasks are controlled for, the difference ...

Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg, LIS

Child Poverty in Upper-Income Countries: Lessons from the Luxembourg Income Study

Women, Poverty, and Social Policy Regimes: A Cross-National Analysis

This paper assesses women’s poverty in 26 diverse LIS countries – five Anglophone countries, six Continental European countries, four Nordic countries, two Eastern European countries, three Southern European countries, and six Latin American countries. Our analyses are organized around four questions: (1) What is the probability that prime-age women, compared to their male counterparts, live in poor ...

Introduction

The Income and Wealth Packages of Older Women in Cross-National Perspective

Objectives. We assess the income and wealth packages of older women’s (age 65+ years) households and the extent to which low income is paired with low wealth, across a group of six high-income countries. Methods. We use data on income and net worth from the Luxembourg Wealth Study, a new cross-national microdatabase. We define income poverty as having household income less than 50% of the national ...

Deindustrialisation and the polarisation of household incomes: The example of urban agglomerations in Germany

The tertiarisation, or perhaps more accurately, the deindustrialisation of the economy has left deep scars on cities. It is evident not only in the industrial wastelands and empty factory buildings, but also in the income and social structures of cities. Industrialisation, collective wage setting, and the welfare state led to a stark reduction in income differences over the course of the 20th century. ...

Changes in Earnings Inequality - An International Perpective