DIW Berlin: SOEPpapers

SOEPpapers 1113 / 2020

Risk Preferences and Training Investments

We analyze workers’ risk preferences and training investments. Our conceptual framework differentiates between the investment risk and insurance mechanisms underpin-ning training decisions. Investment risk leads risk-averse workers to train less; they undertake more training if it insures them against future losses. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to demonstrate that risk affinity is ...

2020| Marco Caliendo, Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, Cosima Obst, Arne Uhlendorff

SOEPpapers 1112 / 2020

Suddenly a Stay-At-Home Dad? Short- and Long-term Consequences of Fathers’ Job Loss on Time Investment in the Household

Commonly described as the “gender care gap”, there is a persistent gender difference in the division of domestic responsibilities in most developed countries. We provide novel evidence on the short- and long-run effects of an exogenous shock on paternal availability, through a job loss, on the allocation of domestic work within couples. We ﬁnd that paternal child care and housework signiﬁcantly increase ...

2020| Juliane Hennecke, Astrid Pape

SOEPpapers 1111 / 2020

Measuring Housing Costs and Housing Affordability Using SOEP: An Example Applied to Older Households

This paper explores the methodological issues to take into account when using SOEP as a database for calculating a measure of housing costs and housing affordability. For this purpose, we focus on the evolution of housing costs for households headed by elderly people between 1998 and 2018. Our review yields two clear conclusions: (1) that SOEP represents a valuable source of data for calculating household ...

2020| Alberto Lozano Alcántara, Laura Romeu Gordo

SOEPpapers 1110 / 2020

In Sickness and in Health? Health Shocks and Relationship Breakdown: Empirical Evidence from Germany

From an economic perspective, marriage and long-term partnership can be seen as a risk-pooling device. This informal insurance contract is, however, not fully enforceable. Each partner is free to leave when his or her support is needed in case of an adverse life event. An adverse health shock is a prominent example for such events. Since relationship breakdown itself is an extremely stressful experience, ...

2020| Christian Bünnings, Lucas Hafner, Simon Reif, Harald Tauchmann

SOEPpapers 1109 / 2020

Temps Dip Deeper: Temporary Employment and the Midlife Nadir in Human Well-Being

Temporary employees rank lower than permanent employees on various measures of mental and physical health, including well-being. In parallel, much research has shown that the relationship between age and well-being traces an approximate U-shape, with a nadir in midlife. Temporary employment may well have different associations with well-being across the lifespan, likely harming people in midlife more ...

2020| Alan Piper

SOEPpapers 1108 / 2020

Covid-19: A Crisis of the Female Self-Employed

We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic, and of the government-mandated measures to contain its spread, affected the self-employed relative to employed individuals in Germany and, secondly, to what extent the female self-employed were more strongly hit than their male counterparts. For our analysis, we use representative real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about ...

2020| Daniel Graeber, Alexander S. Kritikos, Johannes Seebauer

SOEPpapers 1107 / 2020

Industrial Robots, Workers’ Safety, and Health

This study explores the relationship between the adoption of industrial robots and workplace injuries using data from the United States (US) and Germany. Our empirical analyses, based on establishment-level data for the US, suggest that a one standard deviation increase in robot exposure reduces work-related injuries by approximately 16%. These results are driven by manufacturing ﬁrms (–28%), while ...

2020| Rania Gihleb, Osea Giuntella, Luca Stella, Tianyi Wang

SOEPpapers 1106 / 2020

Hartz and Minds: Happiness Effects of Reforming an Employment Agency

Since the labor market reforms around 2005, known as the Hartz reforms, Germany has experienced declining unemployment rates. However, little is known about the reforms’ effect on individual life satisfaction of unemployed workers. This study applies difference-in-difference estimations and ﬁnds a decrease in life satisfaction after the reforms that is more pronounced for male unemployed in west Germany. ...

2020| Max Deter

SOEPpapers 1105 / 2020

Compassion and Envy in Welfare Comparisons

Normative-based distributional comparisons across countries and over time usually build upon the assumption that individuals are selﬁsh. However, there is a consolidated evidence that individuals also care about what others have. In this paper we propose a framework for comparing and ranking distributions that includes non-individualistic possibilities. Speciﬁcally, we consider ranking criteria that ...

2020| Flaviana Palmisano

SOEPpapers 1104 / 2020

How People Know their Risk Preference

People differ in their willingness to take risks. Recent work found that revealed preference tasks (e.g., laboratory lotteries)—a dominant class of measures—are outperformed by survey-based stated preferences, which are more stable and predict real-world risk taking across different domains. How can stated preferences, often criticised as inconsequential “cheap talk,” be more valid and predictive than ...

2020| Ruben C. Arslan, Martin Brümmer, Thomas Dohmen, Johanna Drewelies, Ralph Hertwig, Gert G. Wagner

SOEPpapers 1103 / 2020

Hohe Impfbereitschaft gegen Covid-19 in Deutschland, Impfpflicht bleibt kontrovers

Dieser Bericht beschreibt die Impfbereitschaft und Akzeptanz einer Impfpflicht gegen Covid-19 in Juni und Juli 2020 in Deutschland auf Basis einer Teilstichprobe (SOEP-CoV) des Sozio-ökonomischen Panels, die zum Themenkomplex Covid-19 befragt wurde. SOEP-CoV beinhaltete auch Fragen zur Impfbereitschaft und zur Akzeptanz einer Impfpflicht gegen Covid-19. Das wichtigste Ergebnis unserer Studie ist, dass ...

2020| Daniel Graeber, Christoph Schmidt-Petri, Carsten Schröder

SOEPpapers 1102 / 2020

Are the Losers of Communism the Winners of Capitalism? The Effects of Conformism in the GDR on Transition Success

Following the fall of the Iron Curtain it was important for the acceptance of the new economic and political system that the former Communist elites did not maintain their privileges, and that protesters, who helped to overturn the old system, improved their situation. With newly available panel data on East Germany’s socialist past, the German Democratic Republic, we analyze how former Communist elites, ...

2020| Max Deter

SOEPpapers 1101 / 2020

The Value of Health - Empirical Issues when Estimating the Monetary Value of a QALY Based on Well-Being

Cost-utility analysis compares the monetary cost of health interventions to the associated health consequences expressed using quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). At whichthreshold the ratio of both is still acceptable is a highly contested issue. Obtaining societal valuations of the monetary value of a QALY can help in setting such threshold values but it remains methodologically challenging. A recent ...

2020| Sebastian Himmler, Jannis Stöckel, Job van Exel, Werner Brouwer

SOEPpapers 1099 / 2020

Parental Well-Being in Times of Covid-19 in Germany

We examine the differential effects of Covid-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded as a “disruptive exogenous shock” to family life. We make use of a novel representative survey of parental well-being collected in May and June 2020 in Germany, when schools and day ...

2020| Mathias Huebener, Sevrin Waights, C. Katharina Spiess, Nico A. Siegel, Gert G. Wagner

SOEPpapers 1098 / 2020

The Situation is Serious, but Not Hopeless - Evidence-Based Considerations on the Intra-Couple Division of Childcare before, during and after the Covid-19 Lockdown

Drawing on data from the Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) for 2018, we use a sample of 2,145 heterosexual couples with children below age 13 to investigate the paternal involvement in domestic childcare and the relation of the underlying mechanisms to the two job-related “Covid-19 factors” systemic relevance (SR) and capacity to work from home (WfH). Based on bi- and trivariate analyses of the intra-couple ...

2020| Christina Boll, Simone Schüller

SOEPpapers 1097 / 2020

Subjektive Belastung der Eltern durch Schulschließungen zu Zeiten des Corona-bedingten Lockdowns

Die Corona-bedingten Schulschließungen sowie die Schließung von Kinderbetreuungseinrichtungen im April und Mai 2020 haben viele Eltern vor eine immense Herausforderung gestellt. Plötzlich mussten Kinder ganztags Zuhause betreut und beschult werden. In diesem Beitrag beschäftigen wir uns mit der Frage nach der subjektiven Belastung, der sich Eltern durch die Beschulung Zuhause ausgesetzt sahen. Hierbei ...

2020| Sabine Zinn, Michael Bayer, Theresa Entringer, Jan Goebel, Markus M. Grabka, Daniel Graeber, Martin Kroh, Hannes Kröger, Simon Kühne, Stefan Liebig, Carsten Schröder, Jürgen Schupp, Johannes Seebauer

SOEPpapers 1096 / 2020

Coronavirus & Care: How the Coronavirus Crisis Affected Fathers’ Involvement in Germany

Background: As a response to the spread of the coronavirus in Germany, day care centres and schools closed nationwide, leaving families to grapple with additional child care tasks. In Germany, as in many other societies, women shoulder the lion’s share of housework and child care responsibilities. While the gendered division of household labour has shifted in recent years as men have become more engaged ...

2020| Michaela Kreyenfeld, Sabine Zinn, Theresa Entringer, Jan Goebel, Markus M. Grabka, Daniel Graeber, Martin Kroh, Hannes Kröger, Simon Kühne, Stefan Liebig, Carsten Schröder, Jürgen Schupp, Johannes Seebauer

SOEPpapers 1095 / 2020

Wie gefährlich ist COVID-19? Die subjektive Risikoeinschätzung einer lebensbedrohlichen COVID-19-Erkrankung im Frühjahr und Frühsommer 2020 in Deutschland

To investigate the coronavirus crisis and perceptions of risks associated with the virus, we analyzed data from the longitudinal Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study and the SOEP-CoV study, which is embedded in the SOEP. In the period from April 1 to July 5, 2020, the CoV-questionnaire included the item: “How likely do you think it is that the novel coronavirus will cause you to become critically ill ...

2020| Ralph Hertwig, Stefan Liebig, Ulman Lindenberger, Gert G. Wagner

SOEPpapers 1094 / 2020

Ein interdisziplinäres Studienkonzept zur Dynamik von COVID-19 auf der Basis der prospektiv erhobenen Daten der Kohorten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP)

Die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) hat jüngst Richtlinien für Studien, die Basisdaten für gesundheitspolitische Entscheidungen im Pandemiefall liefern können, veröffentlicht. Durch die Zusammenarbeit zwischen unterschiedlichen Disziplinen kann es gelingen, evidenzbasierte Entscheidungen durch qualitativ hochwertige, längsschnittliche Befragungsdaten aus den Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften ...

2020| Ulrich Rendtel, Reinhard Meister, Jan Goebel, Antje Gößwald, Markus G. Grabka, Jens Hoebel, Martin Schlaud, Carsten Schröder, Gert G. Wagner, Sabine Zinn, Stefan Liebig, Thomas Lampert

SOEPpapers 1093 / 2020

Why Didn’t the College Premium Rise Everywhere? Employment Protection and On-the-Job Investment in Skills

Why has the college wage premium risen rapidly in the United States since the 1980s, but not in European economies such as Germany? We argue that differences in employment protection can account for much of the gap. We develop a model in which ﬁrms and workers make relationship-speciﬁc investments in skill accumulation. The incentive to invest is stronger when employment protection creates an expectation ...

2020| Matthias Doepke, Ruben Gaetani

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