Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Educational Mismatch and Wages: A Panel Analysis

A Comparative Analysis of the Nativity Wage Gap

This paper investigates the source of the gap in the relative wealth position of immigrant households residing in Australia, Germany and the United States. Our results indicate that in Germany and the United States wealth differentials are largely the result of disparity in the educational attainment and demographic composition of the native and immigrant populations, while income differentials are ...

Cognitive Abilities and Earnings - First Evidence for Germany

We provide first evidence on the relationship between cognitive abilities and earnings in Germany using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Study. The estimates suggest that mechanics abilities are positively related to wages of West German workers, even when educational attainment is controlled for. Pragmatics of cognition are not related to earnings. In line with studies for other countries, ...

Do Smart Parents Raise Smart Children? The Intergenerational Transmission of Cognitive Abilities

Complementing prior research on income and educational mobility, we examine the intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities. We find that individuals’ cognitive skills are positively related to their parents’ abilities, despite controlling for educational attainment and family background. Differentiating between mothers’ and fathers’ IQ transmission, we find different effects on the cognition ...

Biases in Estimates of the Smoking Wage Penalty

Gesundheit, Einkommen und Armut, Methoden

Stop Smoking, Your Paycheck Will Thank You! Wage Effects from Smoking Cessation

A growing body of literature has investigated the wage penalty attached to smoking. Little research, in contrast, has been done on the wage effects of smoking cessation. Using survey panel data from Germany, we study the relative earnings of smokers and former smokers over an extended period of time. Our results from pooled OLS regressions of wages on smoking status for ever smokers (smokers, former ...

Does smoking really harm your earnings so much? Biases in current estimates of the smoking wage penalty

Empirical studies on the earnings effects of tobacco use have found significant wage penalties attached to smoking. This article produces evidence that suggests that these estimates are significantly upward biased. The bias arises from a general failure in the literature to control for past smoking behaviour of individuals. Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regressions show that the smoking wage penalty ...

One Last Puff? Public Smoking Bans and Smoking Behavior

This paper investigates the short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking behavior. In 2007 and 2008, state-level smoking bans were gradually introduced in all of Germany's federal states. We exploit this variation to identify the effect that smoke-free policies had on individuals’ smoking propensity and smoking intensity. Using rich longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic ...

Like Brother, Like Sister? - The Importance of Family Background for Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background in skill formation. Sibling correlations are a much broader measure of the impact of family background on children’s outcomes than onedimensional parent-child correlations, which are widely used in the intergenerational mobility literature. Our estimates are based on ...

Cognitive Skills, Non-Cognitive Skills, and Family Background: Evidence from Sibling Correlations

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. Based on a large representative German dataset including IQ test scores and measures of non-cognitive skills, a restricted maximum likelihood model indicates a strong relationship between family background and skill formation. Sibling correlations in non-cognitive ...