Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Income Distribution; Weekly Hours of Work, and Time for Child Rearing: The U.S. Experience in a Cross-National Context

Families, Time and Money in Canada, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States

Unemployment and the Insurance Compensation Principle in Britain and Germany. A Report to the Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society

Happy People Have Children: Choice and Self-Selection into Parenthood

There is mixed evidence in the existing literature on whether children are associated with greater subjective well-being, with the correlation depending on which countries and populations are considered. We here provide a systematic analysis of this question based on three different datasets: two cross-national and one national panel. We show that the association between children and subjective well-being ...

How to Distinguish Voluntary from Involuntary Unemployment: On the Relationship between the Willingness to Work and Unemployment-Induced Unhappiness

Studies investigating the determinants of happiness show that unemployment causes high distress for most affected persons. Researchers conclude that the amount of this disutility demonstrates the involuntariness of unemployment. This paper applies the happiness research approach to German panel data in order to revive the underlying economic question of whether unemployment is voluntary or involuntary. ...

Employed But Still Unhappy? On the Relevance of the Social Work Norm

In the modern welfare state, people who cannot make a living usually receive financial assistance from public funds. Accordingly, the so-called social work norm against living off other people is violated, which may be the reason why the unemployed are so unhappy. If so, however, labour market concepts based on the notion of promoting low-paid jobs that are subsidised if necessary with additional payments ...

I would really love to participate in your survey! Bias problems in the measurement of well-being

This paper argues that satisfaction data from surveys are biased by varying participant attitudes toward the interview itself. In this manner, interviewees in a German panel study report lower life satisfaction when there is evidence of transient influences like aversion. The empirical findings suggest that researchers of well-being should consider interview-specific factors in order to avoid drawing ...

The role of interviewer encounters in panel responses on life satisfaction

This note examines a common explanation why participants of panel surveys may report declining life satisfaction over time. In line with the argument of developing trust relationships between interviewers and interviewees, the analysis reveals positive effects in reported life satisfaction when the person conducting the interview changes to an unfamiliar individual. Yet, the evidence also shows that ...

Third Person Effects in Interview Responses on Life Satisfaction

This paper investigates the finding that reported life satisfaction scores are significantly higher in the German Socio-Economic Panel when a third person is present during the interview. Even after controlling a variety of relevant factors, third person presence makes up a significant difference in satisfaction levels. A plausible explanation is that interviewees distort their responses in a favourable ...

Regional Unemployment and Norm-Induced Effects on Life Satisfaction

While rising unemployment generally reduces people’s happiness, researchers argue that there is a compensating social-norm effect for the unemployed individual, who might suffer less when it is more common to be unemployed. This empirical study rejects this thesis for German panel data, however, and finds that individual unemployment is even more hurtful when regional unemployment is higher. On the ...