Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Love and Death in Germany: The Marital Biography and Its Effect on Mortality

Why Managerial Women are Less Happy Than Managerial Men

Women with managerial careers are significantly less satisfied with their life than their male counterparts. Why? In a representative German panel dataset (GSOEP) we find biological constraints and substitutive mechanisms determining the subjective well-being of female managers. Women’s terminated fertility has a negative impact on women’s life satisfaction between the ages of 35 and 45, when managerial ...

Income packages of households with children: a cross-national correlation analysis

This paper presents stylized facts about household disposable income and its components (the ‘income package’) in ten OECD countries, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study database for the period 1994–2000. The research design is an extension of the design in Todd and Sullivan (2002). Cross-national correlations reveal that there are systematic differences among nations in the relationship between ...

Comparisons in Gender Wage Differentials and Discrimination between Germany and the United Kingdom

Due to the lack of consistent data, direct and robust comparisons of cross-country labour markets have been virtually impossible. This study uses a new panel data series that controls for inconsistencies, thus overcoming this problem. This study estimates gender wage differentials and gender discrimination in the German and United Kingdom labour markets. Panel estimates are used to identify general ...

Social Transfers and Income Inequality in Old-age: A Multi-national Perspective

Household debt and financial assets: evidence from Germany, Great Britain and the USA

We explore the determinants of debt, financial assets and net worth at the household level by using survey data for Germany, Great Britain and the USA. To identify which households are potentially vulnerable to adverse changes in the economic environment, we also explore the determinants of a range of measures of financial pressure: the probability that a household has negative net worth; the debt-to-income ...

The impact of economic conditions on individual and managerial risk taking

The current study examines how the financial crisis of 2008–2009 impacted individuals’ willingness to take risks (WTR). We find substantial changes in the WTR associated with the financial crisis which supports countercyclical risk aversion while controlling for wealth effects and risk perception. Yet, we also observe a quick recovery of the WTR immediately after the crisis. We find that managers are ...

Family Transitions and Risk Attitudes

We use the German Socio Economic Panel to analyze the impact of life changing events on individuals’ risk tolerance levels over time, which is reported in response to a question on individuals’ willingness to take risks. The dataset follows a representative sample of the German population. We find substantial changes in risk attitudes over time with respect to getting married or separating from a partner, ...

Housework, Money, and Marriage

The sharing of public goods and services is one of the most important gains associated with forming a household, even exceeding the efficiency gains from specialization. Most of household public goods are produced using spouses's time, with men devoting about more than one hour per week to home labor and women spending about three hours. We use evidence from a variety of time-use surveys for a ...

Creating low skilled jobs by subsidising market-contracted household work