Forschung SOEP: Soziale Ungleichheiten und Verteilung

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 ...

Intergenerational Transfers and Wealth in the Euro-Area: The Relevance of Inheritances and Gifts in Absolute and Relative Terms

Private wealth is a crucial factor for the economic well‐being of households. Key determinants of private wealth include intergenerational wealth transfers (gifts and inheritances), which are gaining importance since 1990, as research suggests. We conduct a detailed investigation of the distribution of wealth transfers in eight Euro‐area countries. First, we investigate the patterns of prevalence and ...

Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen: Zeit für Experimente

Income Inequality Remains High in Germany - Young Singles and Career Entrants Increasingly at Risk of Poverty

Are We Architects of Our Own Happiness? The Importance of Family Background for Well-Being

This paper analyzes whether individuals have equal opportunity to achieve happiness (or well-being). We estimate sibling correlations and intergenerational correlations in self-reported life satisfaction, satisfaction with household income, job satisfaction, and satisfaction with health. We find high sibling correlations for all measures of well-being. The results suggest that family background explains, ...

Development of Top Incomes in Germany since 2001

What share of total income in Germany is owned by the country’s top income earners and how has this share developed over the past decade? Answers to these questions can be found both in representative survey data such as the longitudinal Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study and in administrative data on income taxation. After the statistics have been harmonized accordingly, it becomes clear there remain ...

Development of Top Incomes in Germany since 2001: Seven Questions to Charlotte Bartels

Inequality-Minimization with a Given Public Budget

We solve the problem of a social planner who seeks to minimize inequality via transfers with a fixed public budget in a distribution of exogenously given incomes. The appropriate solution method depends on the objective function: If it is convex, as in the case of the absolute mean deviation, it can be solved by an interior-point algorithm. If it is quasiconvex, as in case of the Gini coefficient, ...

The Host with the Most? The Effects of the Olympic Games on Happiness

We show that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 had a positive impact on the life satisfaction and happiness of Londoners during the Games, compared to residents of Paris and Berlin. Notwithstanding issues of causal inference, the magnitude of the effects is equivalent to moving from the bottom to the fourth income decile. But they do not last very long: the effects are gone within a year. These conclusions ...

The Host with the Most? The Effects of the Olympic Games on Happiness

We show that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 had a positive impact on the life satisfaction and happiness of Londoners during the Games, compared to residents of Paris and Berlin. Notwithstanding issues of causal inference, the magnitude of the effects is equivalent to moving from the bottom to the fourth income decile. But they do not last very long: the effects are gone within a year. These conclusions ...