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SOEPpapers 814 / 2015
Work-related stress can lead to substantial health problems and thereby result in immense costs for establishments. Therefore, the question as to what extent establishments contribute to their employees’ stress levels is of great importance for firm performance. We investigate the relationship between personnel policies and work-related stress by considering a series of personnel policies that refer ...
2015| Elena Shvartsman, Michael Beckmann
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SOEPpapers 813 / 2015
Using German panel data, we assess the causal effect of job loss, and thus of an extensive income shock, on risk attitude. In line with predictions of expected utility reasoning about absolute risk aversion, losing one’s job reduces the willingness to take risks. This effect strengthens in previous hourly wage, begins to manifest itself as soon as an employee perceives the threat of job loss and is ...
2015| Clemens Hetschko, Malte Preuss
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SOEPpapers 812 / 2015
This paper relates an individual’s social capital and the length of unemployment spells of the very same individual. For this purpose, we analyze several facets of an agent’s social activities as determinants of her social capital. Social activities lead to social interactions within organizational settings, which build up social capital at the group level. Via social interactions an exchange of knowledge ...
2015| Philipp Marek, Benjamin Damm, Tong-Yaa Su
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SOEPpapers 811 / 2015
The term „fuel poverty“ describes to what extent increasing energy costs lead to a new kind of indebtness and poverty of low income households. Up to now there is no sufficient measuring method to identify fuel poverty households in Germany. The present paper reviews a British approach regarding its adaptability on German data. The aim is to examine the potential of the “Low-Income-High-Costs” indicator ...
2015| Nadine Schreiner
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SOEPpapers 810 / 2015
It is still widely debated how non-cognitive skills can be affected by policy intervention. For example, universal music education programs are becoming increasingly popular among policy makers in Germany and other developed countries. These are intended to give children from poor families the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. Moreover, policymakers present these programs as innovative policies ...
2015| Adrian Hille
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SOEPpapers 809 / 2015
This paper argues for the central role of risk aversion in shaping political ideology. We develop a political economy model, which makes explicit the link between risk aversion, the labor market, government policy, and ideology. Our model distinguishes the effects of risk aversion from unemployment risk and our evidence sheds light on debates over explanations for the welfare state. We test our model ...
2015| Matthew Dimick, Daniel Stegmueller
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SOEPpapers 808 / 2015
Does being from a higher social class lead a person to engage in more or less prosocial behavior? Psychological research has recently provided support for a negative effect of social class on prosocial behavior. However, research outside the field of psychology has mainly found evidence for positive or u-shaped relations. In the present research, we therefore thoroughly examined the effect of social ...
2015| Martin Korndörfer, Boris Egloff, Stefan C. Schmukle
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SOEPpapers 807 / 2015
This study examined the long-standing question of whether a person’s position among siblings has a lasting impact on that person’s life course. Empirical research on the relation between birth order and intelligence has convincingly documented that performances on psychometric intelligence tests decline slightly from firstborns to laterborns. By contrast, the search for birth-order effects on personality ...
2015| Julia M. Rohrer, Boris Egloff, Stefan C. Schmukle
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SOEPpapers 806 / 2015
The affordability of housing has become a major topic of discussion in Germany among both social scientists and the public at large. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we provide rent-income ratios over more than two decades and show how they change with households’ disposable needs-adjusted income. We find a substantial increase in the ratios over the 1990s. In the decade that ...
2015| Teresa Backhaus, Kathrin Gebers, Carsten Schröder
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SOEPpapers 805 / 2015
This paper is the first to estimate the causal effect of local human capital stock on individual adiposity and adds to the existing literature on estimating human capital externalities at the neighborhood level. We explore the possible causal pathways that college-educated neighbors exert on individual body weight, with the results revealing small yet significant human capital spillover effects. Among ...
2015| Rui Dang
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SOEPpapers 804 / 2015
This paper aims to verify results of the innovative study on gender identity for the USA by Bertrand et al. (2015) for Germany. They found that women who would earn more than their husbands distort their labor market outcome in order not to violate traditional gender identity norms. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study we also find that the distribution of the share of income earned ...
2015| Anna Wieber, Elke Holst
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SOEPpapers 803 / 2015
This study investigates how the duration of child care leave taken by mothers and fathers relates to changes in couples’ division of housework and child care after postnatal labour market return in Germany. It explores whether take-up of child care related leave may impact the gender division of domestic work beyond the period of leave and examines three theoretical explanations: 1) development of ...
2015| Pia S. Schober, Gundula Zoch
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SOEPpapers 802 / 2015
In this paper, we propose a new comprehensive framework for analysing wage discrimination. This framework assesses wage discrimination on the grounds of conditional wage distributions (rather than just conditional means), regards the whole population (rather than just those in work) and employs a more general definition of work based on Margaret Reid's "third party criterion" (rather than a definition ...
2015| Alexander Sohn
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SOEPpapers 801 / 2015
Risk preferences are typically assumed to be constant for an individual across the life cycle. In this paper we empirically assess if they are time varying. Specifically, we analyse whether health shocks influence individual risk aversion. We follow an innovative approach and use grip strength data to obtain an objective health shock indicator. In order to account for the non-random nature of our data ...
2015| Simon Decker, Hendrik Schmitz
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SOEPpapers 800 / 2015
Integration of immigrants is a two-way process, the success of which depends both on immigrants and on natives. We provide new evidence on the determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration, using data from the 2005 and 2010 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel. In particular, we show that bitterness in life is strongly associated with worries about immigration. This effect cannot be ...
2015| Panu Poutvaara, Max Friedrich Steinhardt
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SOEPpapers 799 / 2015
This paper presents the results of a randomized study of a home visiting program implemented in Germany for low-income, first-time mothers. A major goal of the program is to improve the participants’ economic self-sufficiency and family planning. I use administrative data from the German social security system and detailed telephone surveys to examine the effects of the intervention on maternal employment, ...
2015| Malte Sandner
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SOEPpapers 798 / 2015
The case of German reunification has been subject to extensive research on earnings inequality and labor market integration. however, little is known about the development of equality of opportunity (EOp) in East and West Germany after 1990.Using German micro data, we empirically analyze how circumstances beyond the sphere of individual control explain inequality in East and West Germany. Our results ...
2015| Andreas Peichl, Martin Ungerer
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SOEPpapers 797 / 2015
Existing literature on inequality of opportunity (IOp) has failed to address the question as to how the circumstances and choices of spouses in a couple should be treated. By omitting information relevant to the spouse in IOp estimations, the implicit assumption was full responsibility for the partner's income, effort and circumstance variables. In this paper, we discuss whether or not the partner's ...
2015| Andreas Peichl, Martin Ungerer
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SOEPpapers 796 / 2015
In this paper we propose different criteria to rank income distributions according to equality of opportunity. Different from existing ones, our criteria explicitly recognize the interplay between circumstances and effort. We characterize them axiomatically and we compare them with existing criteria; then we propose some scalar measures. We show that our ex post criteria are mostly obtained from "seemingly" ...
2015| Marc Fleurbaey, Vito Peragine, Xavier Ramos
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SOEPpapers 795 / 2015
Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that paternal unemployment has a surprisingly positive causal effect on the "Big 5" personality traits of children aged 17 to 25. In particular, our results from longitudinal value-added models for personality suggest that paternal unemployment makes children significantly more conscientious and less neurotic. Our results ...
2015| Viola Angelini, Marco Bertoni, Luca Corazzini