Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Life-cycle Incidence of Family Policy Measures in Germany: Evidence from a Dynamic Microsimulation Model

This paper quantifies the life-cycle incidence of key family policy measures in Germany. The analysis is based on a novel dynamic microsimulation model that combines simulated family life-cycles for a base population from the 2009 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) with a comprehensive tax-benefit model. The results indicate that households in Germany benefit considerably from family- and ...

Equal matches are only half the story. Why German female graduates earn 27 % less than males

Germany’s occupational and sectoral change towards a knowledge-based economy calls for high returns on education. Nevertheless, female graduates are paid much less than their male counterparts. We find an overall unadjusted gender pay gap among German graduates of 27 %. This corresponds to an approximate wage gap of 32,5 % thereof 20,3 % account for different endowments and 12,2 % for different remunerations ...

Overeducation among graduates: An overlooked facet of the gender pay gap? Evidence from East and West Germany

Germany’s occupational and sectoral change towards a knowledge‐based economy calls for high returns to education. Nevertheless, female graduates are paid much less than their male counterparts. We wonder whether overeducation affects sexes differently and whether this might answer for part of the gender pay gap. We decompose total year of schooling in years of over- (O), required (R), and undereducation ...

Who is overeducated and why? Probit and dynamic mixed multinomial logit analyses of vertical mismatch in East and West Germany

Overeducation is an often overlooked facet of untapped human resources. But who is overeducated and why? Relying on SOEP data 1984-2011, we use probit models for estimating the likelihood of entering overeducation and dynamic mixed multinomial logit models with random effects addressing state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity. As further robustness checks we use three specifications of the target ...

Remittances and the Brain Drain Revisited: The Microdata Show That More Educated Migrants Remit More

Two of the most salient trends surrounding the issue of migration and development over the last two decades are the large rise in remittances, and an increased flow of skilled migration. However, recent literature based on cross-country regressions has claimed that more educated migrants remit less, leading to concerns that further increases in skilled migration will hamper remittance growth. We revisit ...

Inequality and welfare estimates using two alternative weighting schemes

Equivalence scales reconsidered - an empirical investigation

Country Inequality Rankings and Conversion Schemes

Two conversion schemes may be employed for assessing income inequality from household equivalent incomes: to weight household units by size or by needs. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we show the sensitivity of country inequality rankings to conversion schemes and explain the finding by means of inequality decomposition. A bootstrap approach is implemented to test for statistical significance ...

Retirement and Subjective Well-Being

The life cycle model predicts that individuals substitute leisure for consumption when they retire. We show that the effect of retirement on various well-being measures available in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) are compatible with this prediction: the overall effect on life satisfaction is negligible, while satisfaction with the free time increases and satisfaction with household income ...

Home Production and Retirement in Couples: A Panel Data Analysis

We analyse the effects of retirement of one partner on home production by both partners in a couple. Using longitudinal data from Germany on couples, we control for fixed household specific effects to address the concern that retirement decisions are correlated with unobserved characteristics that also affect home production. For males and females, we find that own retirement significantly increases ...