Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Reversal of gender differences in educational attainment: an historical analysis of the West German case

Background information: During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, West Germany witnessed a reversal of gender differences in educational attainment, as females began to outperform males. Purpose: The main objective was to analyse which processes were behind the reversal of gender differences in educational attainment after 1945. The theoretical reflections and empirical evidence presented for the ...

Health: Social Inequality in Early Childhood Health - Participation in the Preventive Health Care Program for Children

This paper asks how far socioeconomic differences in parental child health investments can be explained by personal and social resources within the family. Using SOEP data from the 2003 to 2008 newborn questionnaire, we estimate multiple logistic regressions to determine the effects of migration status, education, time resources, coping competencies, and social resources (in terms of shared parenthood ...

Ethnic Inequality in Preterm Birth

Preterm delivery is associated with lower health chances after birth. Women with a migration background often have a higher preterm risk (<37 gestational weeks) compared to the nonmigrant majority population. In Germany, little is known about the scope and causes for more adverse birth outcomes among immigrant women. Focusing primarily on two large migrant groups, that is first-generation Turkish ...

Discrimination in Hiring Based on Potential and Realized Fertility: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer’s perspective, in their fertile age they are also at “risk” of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a large-scale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9,000 job applications, varying job candidate’s personal ...

Supply of Schools, Educational Attainment and Earnings

Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History

Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic. We provide an alternative theory: Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. We test the theory using county-level data from late 19th-century Prussia, exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the Reformation ...

European Integration and Income Inequality

A Comparison of the Main Household Income Surveys for Germany: EVS and SOEP

Discrimination in Employment in the Federal Republik of Germany

Evolution and Determinants of Rent Burdens in Germany

The affordability of housing has become a major topic of discussion in Germany among both social scientists and the public at large. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we provide rent-income ratios over more than two decades and show how they change with households’ disposable needs-adjusted income. We find a substantial increase in the ratios over the 1990s. In the decade that ...