Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

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 ...

Concerns about the Euro and Happiness in Germany during Times of Crisis

This empirical study investigates whether people's concerns about the Euro currency affect their life satisfaction. A minority of very concerned individuals appear to be unhappy, which cannot be explained by personality or other observable factors typically affecting well-being. As a novelty, this investigation exploits exogenous variation in reported concerns by using the intensity of media coverage ...

Dissatisfied with Life or with Being Interviewed? Happiness and the Motivation to Participate in a Survey

Information on the number of interviewer contacts allows insights into how people’s responses to questions on happiness are connected to the difficulty of reaching potential participants. Using the paradata of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), this paper continues such research by revealing a strong link between respondent motivation and reported happiness. Analyses of responses by future ...

From Hasan to Herbert: Name-Giving Patterns of Immigrant Parents between Acculturation and Ethnic Maintenance

Names often indicate belonging to a certain ethnic group. When immigrant parents choose a first name for their child that is common in their host society, they show a high degree of acculturation. In contrast, selecting a name common only in the parents’ country of origin indicates ethnic maintenance. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel for Turkish, Southwest European, and former Yugoslav ...

Transnational Human Capital, Education, and Social Inequality. Analyses of International Student Exchange

Due to globalization, skills such as foreign language proficiency and intercultural competence, here referred to as transnational human capital, are becoming increasingly important. A study-abroad program during schooling is one of the most efficient ways to acquire transnational human capital. Until now, class-specific access to transnational capital has remained largely unexplored. With recourse ...

German Public Opinion on Admitting Refugees

Since the beginning of 2016, the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study has been conducting a monthly survey of German attitudes, expectations, and fears concerning migration. The third wave of the survey,—the Barometer of Public Opinion on Refugees in Germany (Stimmungsbarometer zu Geflüchteten in Deutschland)—, conductedin March 2016, shows that more than half of all respondents still associate the influx ...

European Integration, Equality Rights and People´s Beliefs: Evidence from Germany

At the outset, this article describes in detail how the European Union has replaced the nation-state concept of equality with a transnational idea of equality for all European citizens. It then investigates the extent to which German respondents support the idea of non-discrimination between German nationals and other Europeans. The existing literature argues that the process of opening up the borders ...

Effects of income inequality on population health: new evidence from the European Community Household Panel