SOEP-Core v27.2i (update international edition, data 1984-2010)

The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is a wide-ranging representative longitudinal study of private households, located at the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW Berlin. Every year, there were nearly 11,000 households, and more than 20,000 persons sampled by the fieldwork organization TNS Infratest Sozialforschung. The data provide information on all household members, consisting of Germans living in the Old and New German States, Foreigners, and recent Immigrants to Germany. The Panel was started in 1984. Some of the many topics include household composition, occupational biographies, employment, earnings, health and satisfaction indicators. As early as June 1990-even before the Economic, Social and Monetary Union-SOEP expanded to include the states of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), thus seizing the rare opportunity to observe the transformation of an entire society. An immigrant sample was added as well to account for the changes that took place in Germany society in 1994/95. Further new samples were added in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006 and 2009. The survey is constantly being adapted and developed in response to current social developments.

Dataset Information

Titel: German Socio-oeconomic Panel Study (SOEP), data of the years 1984-2010

DOI: 10.5684/soep.v27.2i
Collection period: 1984-2010
Publication date: May 2, 2012
Principal investigators: Gert. G. Wagner, Joachim R. Frick, Jürgen Schupp, Silke Anger, Marco Giesselmann, Jan Goebel, Markus M. Grabka, Elke Holst, Peter Krause, Martin Kroh, Elisabeth Liebau, Henning Lohmann, David Richter, Christian Schmitt, Daniel Schnitzlein, Juliana Werneburg

Worldwide version

International Science Use Version of the SOEP (95 % version). This data set can be used worldwide. Please contact Dean R. Lillard at Cornell University, USA, for further information.

Information about the data set:

Number of units 63.385
Number of variables 45.536 in 339 data sets
Data format  STATA, SPSS, SAS, CSV 
MD5 fingerprints

 
    csv_95.zip 335ae73554471441b0e8985432e0554c
    sas_de_95.zip cd5596925276411498095cbbb3af4544
    sas_en_95.zip 1f26b0736a3c65e0c097885d856ca9f8
    spss_de_95.zip 9cceff962da6508173b6a5ce49477b2f
    spss_en_95.zip 1fa8b41c66f9f7a4c3adae66cfe68123
    stata_de_95.zip 10a613e07be17f7f28f54a17dd402574
    stata_de+en_95.zip 704f0849761543d1f3f888ae3fa07c64
    stata_en_95.zip 68a0268e42853e775b7d040aff0fec42

Publications using this file should refer to the above DOI infoFind an explanation on the usage of DOI here.and cite following references

  • Goebel, Jan, Markus M. Grabka, Stefan Liebig, Martin Kroh, David Richter, Carsten Schröder, and Jürgen Schupp. 2019. The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik (Journal of Economics and Statistics) 239 (2), 345-360. (https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2018-0022)

If you do not exclude the cases of the migration samples in your analysis, then please also cite the following reference:

  • Herbert Brücker, Martin Kroh, Simone Bartsch, Jan Goebel, Simon Kühne, Elisabeth Liebau, Parvati Trübswetter, Ingrid Tucci & Jürgen Schupp. 2014. The new IAB-SOEP Migration Sample: an introduction into the methodology and the contents. SOEP Survey Paper 216 (PDF, 444.25 KB), Series C. Berlin, Nürnberg: DIW Berlin.

If you do not exclude the cases of the refugee samples in your analysis, please also cite: 

  • Herbert Brücker, Yuliya Kosyakova, Nina Rother, Sabine Zinn, Elisabeth Liebau, Wenke Gider, Silvia Schwanhäuser, & Manuel Siegert. 2025. Exploring Integration and Migration Dynamics: The Research Potentials of a Large-Scale Longitudinal Household Study of Refugees in Germany. European Sociological Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaf032.

If you use data from the SOEP-LEE2 surveys, please also cite:

  • Wenzel Matiaske, Torben Dall Schmidt, Christoph Halbmeier, Martina Maas, Doris Holtmann, Carsten Schröder, Tamara Böhm, Stefan Liebig, and Alexander S. Kritikos. 2023. SOEP-LEE2 : Linking Surveys on Employees to Employers in Germany. Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik Data Observer, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2023-0031.

If you would like to refer more specifically, please also cite:

  • Schröder, Carsten, Johannes König, Alexandra Fedorets, Jan Goebel, Markus M. Grabka, Holger Lüthen, Maria Metzing, Felicitas Schikora, and Stefan Liebig. 2020. The economic research potentials of the German Socio-Economic Panel study. German Economic Review 21 (3), 335-371. (https://doi.org/10.1515/ger-2020-0033)
  • Giesselmann, Marco, Sandra Bohmann, Jan Goebel, Peter Krause, Elisabeth Liebau, David Richter, Diana Schacht, Carsten Schröder, Jürgen Schupp, and Stefan Liebig. 2019. The Individual in Context(s): Research Potentials of the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) in Sociology. European Sociological Review 35 (5), 738-755. (https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcz029)
  • Jacobsen, Jannes, Magdalena Krieger, Felicitas Schikora, and Jürgen Schupp. 2021. Growing Potentials for Migration Research using the German Socio-Economic Panel Study. Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 241 (4), 527-549. (https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2021-0001)
  • Fedorets, Alexandra, Stefan Kirchner, Jule Adriaans, and Oliver Giering. 2022. Data on Digital Transformation in the German Socio-Economic Panel. Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 242 (5-6), 691-705. (https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2021-0056)


Survey Instruments 2010: 2) Survey Instruments 2010 Field-de

Please find all sample specific questionnaires of this year and all questionnaires of previous years on this site

1) Handgreifkraftmessung im Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP) 2006 und 2008

2) The Request for Record Linkage in the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample

3) Job submission instructions for the SOEPremote System at DIW Berlin – Update 2014

4) Editing and Multiple Imputation of Item Non-response in the Wealth Module of the German Socio-Economic Panel

5) Die Vercodung der offenen Angaben zu den Ausbildungsberufen im Sozio-Oekonomischen Panel

6) SOEP 2010 – Preparation of data from the new SOEP consumption module: Editing, imputation, and smoothing

7) Kognitionspotenziale Jugendlicher - Ergänzung zum Jugendfragebogen der Längsschnittstudie Sozio-oekonomisches Panel (SOEP)

8) Multi-Itemskalen im SOEP Jugendfragebogen

9) Missing Income Data in the German SOEP: Incidence, Imputation and its Impact on the Income Distribution

10) Zur Erhebung des adaptiven Verhaltens von zwei- und dreijährigen Kindern im Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP)

11) SOEP 2006 – TIMEPREF: Dataset on the Economic Behavior Experiment on Time Preferences in the 2006 SOEP Survey

12) Assessing the distributional impact of "imputed rent" and "non-cash employee income" in microdata : Case studies based on EU-SILC (2004) and SOEP (2002)

All documentation for filtering can be found on this page

1) SOEP 2010 – Methodenbericht zum Befragungsjahr 2010 (Welle 27) des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels

2) SOEP FiD – 'Familien in Deutschland' 2010: Methodenbericht

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