DIW Berlin: SOEPpapers

SOEPpapers 1156 / 2021

The Development of the Rank-Order Stability of the Big Five across the Life Span

Several studies have suggested that the rank-order stability of personality increases until midlife and declines later in old age. However, this inverted U-shaped pattern has not consistently emerged in previous research; in particular, a recent investigation implementing several methodological advances failed to support it. To resolve the matter, we analyzed data from two representative panel studies ...

2021| Ingo S. Seifert, Julia M. Rohrer, Boris Egloff, Stefan C. Schmukle

SOEPpapers 1155 / 2021

Center-Based Care and Parenting Activities

We examine the relationship between parenting activities and center-based care using time diary and survey data for mothers in Germany. While mothers using center-based care spend significantly less time in the presence of their child, we find that differences in the time spent on specific activities such as reading, talking, and playing with the child are relatively small or zero. The pattern of results ...

2021| Jonas Jessen, C. Katharina Spiess, Sevrin Waights

SOEPpapers 1154 / 2021

Time, Income and Subjective Well-Being – 20 Years of Interdependent Multidimensional Polarization in Germany

Society drifts apart in many dimensions. Economists focus on income of the poor and rich and the distribution of income but a broader spectrum of dimensions is required to draw the picture of multiple facets of individual life. In our study of multidimensional polarization we extend the income dimension by time, a pre-requisite and fundamental resource of any individual activity. In particular, we ...

2021| Joachim Merz, Bettina Scherg

SOEPpapers 1153 / 2021

Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period, and Cohort Effects

Economists increasingly recognise the importance of personality traits for socio-economic outcomes, but little is known about the stability of these traits over the life cycle. Existing empirical contributions typically focus on age patterns and disregard cohort and period inﬂuences. This paper contributes novel evidence for the separability of age, period, and cohort effects for a broad range of personality ...

2021| Bernd Fitzenberger, Gary Mena, Jan Nimczik, Uwe Sunde

SOEPpapers 1152 / 2021

Does Grandparenting Pay off for the Next Generations? Intergenerational Effects of Grandparental Care

Grandparents act as the third largest caregiver after parental care and daycare in Germany, as in many Western societies. Adopting a double-generation perspective, we investigate the causal impact of this care mode on children’s health, socio-emotional behavior, and school outcomes, as well as parental well-being. Based on representative German panel data sets, and exploiting arguably exogenous variations ...

2021| Mara Barschkett, C. Katharina Spiess, Elena Ziege

SOEPpapers 1151 / 2021

Overcoming Barriers to Service Access: Refugees’ Professional Support Service Utilization and the Impact of Human and Social Capital

After arriving in a new country, refugees are most often dependent on professional support to reestablish their livelihood. It is however well documented that refugees face barriers when seeking access to services aimed at facilitating their settlement and integration. This study examines refugees’ support service needs and their actual utilization and investigates the impact of social and human capital ...

2021| Ellen Heidinger

SOEPpapers 1150 / 2021

The Role of Personality for Gender Gaps in Political Interest and Activity

Women have been found to be, on average, less interested in politics and less politically active than men, which might reduce the representation of women’s interests in a democracy. In order to enhance the understanding of these gender gaps, this preregistered study analyzes the role of personality differences for gender gaps in political interest and activity.I use a large representative sample of ...

2021| Adam Ayaita

SOEPpapers 1149 / 2021

Working Time Mismatch and Job Satisfaction: The Role of Employees’ Time Autonomy and Gender

Evidence shows that working time mismatch, i.e. the difference between actual and desired working hours, is negatively related to employees’ job satisfaction. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine the potential moderating effect of working time autonomy on this relation and we also consider the corresponding role of gender. First, individual fixed effects panel estimations ...

2021| Christian Grund, Katja Rebecca Tilkes

SOEPpapers 1148 / 2021

Television, Health, and Happiness: A Natural Experiment in West Germany

Watching television is the most time-consuming human activity besides work but its role for individual well-being is unclear. Negative consequences portrayed in the literature raise the question whether this popular pastime constitutes an economic good or bad, and hence serves as a prime example of irrational behavior reducing individual health and happiness. Using rich panel data, we are the first ...

2021| Adrian Chadi, Manuel Hoffmann

SOEPpapers 1147 / 2021

How Causal Is Separation? Lessons Learnt from Endogenous Switching Regression Models for Single Mothers’ Economic Strain in Germany

Single mothers often experience precarious financial conditions. However, it is not fully understood to what extent separation is the cause of these conditions versus being their consequence. Estimating an endogenous switching regression model based on a sample of 626 separated and 5,525 non-separated mothers drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984-2018, we disentangle the roles of causation ...

2021| Antonia Birkeneder, Christina Boll

SOEPpapers 1146 / 2021

Buying Control? 'Locus of Control' and the Uptake of Supplementary Health Insurance

This paper analyses the relationship between locus of control (LOC) and the demand for supplementary health insurance. Drawing on longitudinal data from Germany, we find robust evidence that individuals having an internal LOC are more likely to take up supplementary private health insurance (SUPP). The increase in the probability to have a SUPP due to one standard deviation increase in the measure ...

2021| Eric Bonsang, Joan Costa-Font, Sonja DeNew

SOEPpapers 1145 / 2021

Worrying about Work? Disentangling the Relationship between Economic Insecurity and Mental Health

Literature encompassing economic insecurity and its relationship with mental health has increased significantly in recent years. While the association of job insecurity and mental health has been researched extensively, less is known about the general relationship between economic insecurity and mental health. This paper analyses the simultaneous influence of six different economic insecurity indicators ...

2021| Paul Fiedler

SOEPpapers 1144 / 2021

Sophistication about Self-Control

We propose a broadly applicable empirical approach to classify individuals as time-consistent versus native or sophisticated regarding their self-control limitations. Operationalizing our approach based on nationally representative data reveals that self-control problems are pervasive and that most people are at least partly aware of their limited self-control. Compared to naifs, sophisticates have ...

2021| Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, Sarah C. Dahmann, Daniel A. Kamhöfer, Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch

SOEPpapers 1143 / 2021

Causality in the Link between Income and Satisfaction: IV Estimation with Internal Instruments

Usually, it is expected that income increases life satisfaction. In recent years tough, research emerged that shows how subjective well-being, including satisfaction, inﬂuences objective measures, as for example income. This would then require explicit identiﬁcation strategies for estimating effects of income on life satisfaction. I address this issue using German SOEP data and Lewbel’s (2012) method, ...

2021| Susanne Elsas

SOEPpapers 1142 / 2021

Limited Self-knowledge and Survey Response Behavior

We study response behavior in surveys and show how the explanatory power of self-reports can be improved. First, we develop a choice model of survey response behavior under the assumption that the respondent has imperfect self-knowledge about her individual characteristics. In panel data, the model predicts that the variance in responses for different characteristics increases in self-knowledge and ...

2021| Armin Falk, Thomas Neuber, Philipp Strack

SOEPpapers 1141 / 2021

Pension Wealth and the Gender Wealth Gap

We examine the gender wealth gap with a focus on pension wealth and statutory pension rights. By taking into account employment characteristics of women and men, we are able and identify the extent to which the redistributive effect of pension rights reduces the gap. The empirical basis of this examination is the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), which is one of the few datasets where information on wealth ...

2021| Karla Cordova, Markus M. Grabka, Eva Sierminska

SOEPpapers 1140 / 2021

On the Right Track? – The Role of Work Experience in Migrant Mothers’ Current Employment Probability

This paper investigates the role of work experience in migrant mothers’ current employment in Germany. Unlike previous papers, we focus on actual experience and add the motherhood aspect. To this end, we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel 2013-2018 including the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample. Having immigrated to Germany and female sex are the two treatments of our sample of 491 migrant mothers, ...

2021| Christina Boll, Andreas Lagemann

SOEPpapers 1139 / 2021

Why a Labour Market Boom Does Not Necessarily Bring Down Inequality: Putting Together Germany’s Inequality Puzzle

After an economically tough start into the new millennium, Germany experienced an unprecedented employment boom after 2005 only stopped by the COVID-19 pandemic. Persistently high levels of inequality despite a booming labour market and drastically falling unemployment rates constituted a puzzle, suggesting either that the German job miracle mainly beneﬁtted individuals in the mid- or high-income range ...

2021| Martin Biewen, Miriam Sturm

SOEPpapers 1138 / 2021

Personality Maturation and Personality Relaxation: Differences of the Big Five Personality Traits in the Years around the Beginning and Ending of Working Life

Objective: At work, people are confronted with clear behavioral expectations. In line with the Social Investment Principle, the beginning and ending of working life might thus promote changes in personality traits that are relevant at work (e.g., Conscientiousness). Method: Based on the data from the Socio- Economic Panel Study (SOEP), we examined nuanced differences of the Big Five personality traits ...

2021| Eva Asselmann, Jule Specht

SOEPpapers 1137 / 2021

SOEP-RV: Linking German Socio-Economic Panel Data to Pension Records

The aim of the project SOEP-RV is to link data from participants in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) survey to their individual Deutsche Rentenversicherung (German Pension Insurance) records. For all SOEP respondents who give explicit consent to record linkage, SOEP-RV creates a linked dataset that combines the comprehensive multi-topic SOEP data with detailed cross-sectional and longitudinal ...

2021| Carsten Schröder

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