Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Social Comparisons and Attitudes towards Foreigners. Evidence from the 'Fall of the Iron Curtain'

We exploit the natural experiment of German re-unification to address the question whether distress from social (income) comparisons results in negative attitudes towards foreigners. Our empirical approach rests upon East German individuals who have West German peers. We use the exogenous variation of wealth of West German peers shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall as an instrument to identify ...

Alternative Approaches for Econometric Analysis of Panel Count Data Using Dynamic Latent Class Models (With Application to Doctor Visits Data)

Cross-sectional latent class regression models, also known as switching regressions or hidden Markov models, cannot identify transitions between classes that may occur over time. This limitation can potentially be overcome when panel data are available. For such data, we develop a sequence of models that combine features of the static cross-sectional latent class (finite mixture) models with those ...

The labour market consequences of self-employment spells: European evidence

Sharing and Caring: Older Europeans' Living Arrangements

Work-Rich and Work-Poor Couples: polarisation in 14 countries in Europe

Moving up a Gear: The Impact of Compressing Instructional Time into Fewer Years of Schooling

Policy-makers face a trade-off between the provision of higher levels of schooling and earlier labour market entries. A fundamental education reform in Germany tackles this trade-off by reducing high school by one year while leaving the total instructional time unchanged. Employing administrative data on all high school graduates in 2002-2013 in Germany, we exploit both temporal and regional variation ...

The Parental Leave Benefit: A Key Family Policy Measure, One Decade Later

On January 1, 2017, the parental leave benefit will be celebrating its tenth anniversary. Although its implementation was fervidly debated, it has become a widely accepted family policy measure. Its impact on parental labor supply, the division oflabor between parents, fertility, and indicators that reflect the well-being of parents and children have been examined from a variety of perspectives. A ...

Parental Labour Supply Responses to the Abolition of Day Care Fees

This paper provides evidence that low private contributions to highly subsidised day care constrain mothers from working longer hours. We study the effects of a reform that abolished day care fees in Germany on parental labour supply. The reform removed private contributions to highly subsidised day care in the year before children enter primary school. We exploit the staggered reform across states ...

The Impact of Domestic Child Care on School Performance

Family

Family policy gained considerable relevance which is reflected by the current public attention to family issues. In regard to many recommendations of the KVI in 2001 improvements can be reported which family research profited from in a considerable way. However, pertaining to quality and content progress in data provision since the beginning of the 21st century was limited. Particularly, the availability ...