Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Mothers' employment in wealthy countries: how do cultural and institutional factors shape the motherhood employment and working hours gap?

Existing research shows that women’s employment patterns are not so much driven by gender, as by gendered parenthood, with childless women and men (including fathers) employed at substantially higher levels than mothers in most countries. We focus on the cross-national variation in the gap in employment participation and working time between mothers and women without children in the same household. ...

Worker Personality: Another Skill Bias beyond Education in the Digital Age

We present empirical evidence suggesting that technological progress in the digital age will be biased not only with respect to skills acquired through education but additionally with respect to non‐cognitive skills (personality). We measure the direction of technological change by estimated future digitalization probabilities of occupations, and non‐cognitive skills by the Big Five personality traits ...

The Socio-Economic Module of the Berlin Aging Study II (SOEP-BASE): Description, Structure, and Questionnaire

The Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) is a multidisciplinary study that allows for the investigation of how a multitude of health status factors as well as many other social and economic outcomes interplay. The sample consists of 1,600 participants aged 60 to 80, and 600 participants aged 20 to 35. The socio-economic part of BASE-II, the so called SOEPBASE, is conducted by the SOEP Group at the DIW Berlin. ...

Mothers' Employment in Wealthy Countries: How Do Cultural and Institutional Factors Shape the Motherhood Employment and Working Hours Gap

Existing research shows that women’s employment patterns are not so much driven by gender, as by gendered parenthood, with childless women and men (including fathers) employed at substantially higher levels than mothers in most countries. We focus on the cross-national variation in the gap in employment participation and working time between mothers and women without children in the same household. ...

The dynamics of housing tenure choice: Lessons from Germany and the United States

This paper investigates the likelihood and timing of housing tenure choice dynamics including both the initial transition to homeownership, and possible transitions back to rental tenure and to an additional owned home. This is done across the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Further, housing price data is added for both countries. For the US, data ...

The Happiness of Giving: Evidence from the German Socioeconomic Panel That Happier People Are More Generous

This study explores the causal direction between happiness and charitable giving. Through the application of Cohen’s path analysis, the main purpose of the study is to find evidence which of the possible causal directions—the one from giving to happiness or from happiness to giving—is the more dominant one. To that aim the authors use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel 2009/10. In a sample of ...

Life Satisfaction and Endogenous Aspirations

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (N = 13,145), we investigate the effects of (not) achieving aspirations on subjective well-being. We match individual-level data about life satisfaction aspirations with their subsequent realizations and we jointly estimate two panel-data equations, the first depicting the effects that (not) achieving initial aspirations exerts on the subsequent level ...

Asymmetric affective forecasting errors and their correlation with subjective well-being

Aims Social scientists have postulated that the discrepancy between achievements and expectations affects individuals' subjective well-being. Still, little has been done to qualify and quantify such a psychological effect. Our empirical analysis assesses the consequences of positive and negative affective forecasting errors—the difference between realized and expected subjective well-being—on ...

Overview of Child Well Being in Germany: Policy Towards a Supportive Environment for Children (Zur Lage der Kinder in Deutschland: Politik für Kinder als Zukunftsgestaltung)

Cohort Profile: The Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II)

Similar to other industrialized countries, Germany’s population is ageing. Whereas some people enjoy good physical and cognitive health into old age, others suffer from a multitude of age-related disorders and impairments which reduce life expectancy and affect quality of life. To identify and characterize the factors associated with ‘healthy’ vs. ‘unhealthy’ ageing, we have launched the Berlin Aging ...