Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

A Portrait of Child Poverty in Germany

This paper offers a descriptive portrait of income poverty among children in Germany between the early 1980s and 2001, with a focus on developments since unification in 1991. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are used to estimate poverty rates, rates of entry to and exit from poverty, and the duration of time spent in and out of poverty. The analysis focuses upon comparisons between East andWest ...

The Impact of Tax and Transfer Systems on Children in the European Union

Parental time dedication and children’s education. An analysis of West Germany

Parental time dedication in childhood, at least of certain kinds, has been observed to be positive for children’s cognitive and emotional development. We examine two underexplored issues: a) the effect of time inputs in early childhood on later educational achievement (at age 17) and b) effect differences by parents’ level of education. We use data from the German Socioeconomic Panel and analyze a ...

The Interaction of Job Satisfaction, Job Search, and Job Changes. An Empirical Investigation with German Panel Data

Using the rich data set of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) this article analyzes the effects of job characteristics on job satisfaction as well as the conditions under which low job satisfaction leads to job search, and under which job search leads to job changes. Individual fixed effects are included into the analysis in order to hold unobserved heterogeneity constant. According to the empirical ...

Performance Pay, Risk Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

We present a model in which workers with greater ability and greater risk tolerance move into performance pay jobs to capture rents and contrast it with the classic agency model. Estimates from the German Socio-Economic Panel confirm testable implications drawn from our model. First, before controlling for earnings, workers in performance pay jobs have higher job satisfaction, a proxy for on-the-job ...

Welfare Migration in Europe and the Cost of a Harmonised Social Assistance

Female Proclivity to the World of Business

This paper investigates entrepreneurial women confronted with the self-employment or business career choice. Optimistic women have a higher proclivity to be businesswomen. Businesswomen select self- over paid employment when they are young or old, less educated, married or with under-age children. There are no significant native-immigrant differences. However, among immigrant women those who are in ...

Businesswomen in Germany and their performance by ethnicity: It pays to be self-employed

In this paper I assert that the entrepreneurial spirit can also exist in salaried jobs. I study the determinants of wages and the labor market success of two kinds of entrepreneurial women in Germany - self-employed and salaried businesswomen - and investigate whether ethnicity is important in these challenging jobs. Employing data from the German Socioeconomic Panel I estimate selection adjusted wage ...

Ethnic Identity and Work

Immigrants do not fare as well as natives in economic terms; even after including many controls, an unexplained part remains. The ethnic identity entered the field of labor and migration economics in an effort to better explain the economic outcomes of immigrants, their behavior and their often perceived as irrational and suboptimal choices. Quantifying ethnic identity is a major issue; even more challenging ...

Gender, Ethnic Identity and Work