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SOEPpapers 674 / 2014
Long term panel data enable researchers to construct Life Satisfaction (LS) trajectories for individuals over time. In this paper we analyse the trajectories of respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel who recorded their LS for 20 consecutive years in 1991-2010. Previous research has shown that at least a quarter of these respondents recorded substantial long term changes in LS (Headey, Muffels ...
2014| Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels
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SOEPpapers 673 / 2014
This paper examines the relationship between social capital and adult learning. We test this association empirically using measures of various types of social capital and adult learning based on the German Socioeconomic Panel. We use predetermined measures of social capital to exclude social skills or friends encountered during the adult education class. Fixed effects for latent underlying factors ...
2014| Anna-Elisabeth Thum, Miroslav Beblavy
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SOEPpapers 672 / 2014
Formal performance appraisals (PA) are one of the most important human resource management practices in companies. In this paper, we focus on the reaction of employees to these performance assessments. In particular, we investigate the effect between the incidence of being formally evaluated by a supervisor and job and income satisfaction. Building on a representative, longitudinal sample of more ...
2014| Patrick Kampkötter
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SOEPpapers 671 / 2014
This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and in particular labor market experience accumulated in the home countries of the immigrants receive signifiantly lower returns than human ...
2014| Leilanie Basilio, Thomas K. Bauer, Anica Kramer
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SOEPpapers 670 / 2014
While the health benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and children are well known, breastfeeding may make it difficult for mothers to return early to the labor market. Maternity and parental leave regulations have been designed to reduce this conflict. In 2007, Germany put into effect a new parental leave benefit (Elterngeld). The related reform increased the number of parents eligible for benefits ...
2014| Anita Kottwitz, Anja Oppermann, C. Katharina Spieß
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SOEPpapers 669 / 2014
This paper estimates the causal effect of retirement on health, health behavior, and healthcare utilization. Using Regression Discontinuity Design to exploit financial incentives in the German pension system for identification, I investigate a wide range of health behaviors (e.g. alcohol and tobacco consumption, physical activity, diet and sleep) as potential mechanisms. The results show a long-run ...
2014| Peter Eibich
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SOEPpapers 668 / 2014
In this paper a descriptive overview of the housing situation of immigrants in Germany is combined with a multivariate analysis on potential effects of rental price discrimination for specific groups of immigrants. The driving research question is, whether immigrants systematically pay higher rents for comparable flats. Utilizing data from the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) different variables ...
2014| Andreas Hartung
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SOEPpapers 667 / 2014
The majority of empirical studies make use of the assumption of stable preferences in searching for a relationship between risk attitude and the decision to become and stay an entrepreneur. Yet empirical evidence on this relationship is limited. In this paper, we show that entry into entrepreneurship itself plays a decisive role in shaping risk preferences. We find that becoming self-employed is indeed ...
2014| Mattias Brachert, Walter Hyll
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SOEPpapers 666 / 2014
Up to now in the social sciences, what is known as citizen science—the involvement of interested citizens in scientific surveys—has been used relatively little as a method of empirical social research. While the “citizens’ dialogues” that are becoming more widespread in politics can be considered a kind of social scientific citizen science, the participants in these dialogues are not selected randomly ...
2014| Gert G. Wagner, Michaela Engelmann, Jan Goebel, Florian Griese, Marcel Hebing, Janine Napieraj, Marius Pahl, Carolin Stolpe, Monika Wimmer, Alexander Eickelpasch, Jürgen Schupp
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SOEPpapers 665 / 2014
We study the development of teenage fertility in East and West Germany using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) and from the German Mikrozensus. Following the international literature we derive hypotheses on the patterns of teenage fertility and test whether they are relevant in the German case. We find that teenage fertility is associated with teenage age and education, with the income ...
2014| Kamila Cygan-Rehm, Regina T. Riphahn
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SOEPpapers 664 / 2014
Since election results routinely show that elderly people are especially prone to cast their votes for the German Conservatives and do hardly sympathize with the Greens, the question arises: Does the ageing of the electorate go along with an increasing asymmetry of electoral chances? The article examines whether the electoral success of the Conservatives in the elderly population stems from a long-standing ...
2014| Sven Stadtmüller
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SOEPpapers 663 / 2014
Despite the increasing incidence of part-time employment in Germany, the effects on wage rates are studied rarely. I therefore use SOEP panel data from 1984 to 2010 and apply different econometric approaches and definitions of part-time work to measure the socalled part-time wage gap of both, men and women in East and West Germany. A very robust finding is that part-time working men are subject to ...
2014| Elke Wolf
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SOEPpapers 662 / 2014
Theoretical research on inequity and social justice as well as experimental research indicate that perceived injustice may cause stress and thus may have negative effects on health. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) of the years 2005 to 2011, this study investigates if perceptions of earnings (un)fairness impact employees’ health. The analyses show that a change in ...
2014| Reinhard Schunck, Carsten Sauer, Peter Valet
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SOEPpapers 661 / 2014
Overeducation is an often overlooked facet of untapped human resources. But who is overeducated and why? Relying on SOEP data 1984‐2011, we use probit models for estimating the likelihood of entering overeducation and dynamic mixed multinomial logit models with random effects addressing state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity. As further robustness checks we use three specifications of the target ...
2014| Christina Boll, Julian Sebastian Leppin, Klaus Schömann
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SOEPpapers 660 / 2014
Nach der Auflösung einer Partnerschaft bestehen die finanziellen Verflechtungen der ehemaligen Partner meist noch weiter. Dies gilt umso mehr, wenn aus der Partnerschaft Kinder hervor gegangen sind. Dem Kindesunterhalt kommt eine besondere Rolle zu. Trotz seiner sozial- und familienpolitischen Bedeutung liegen bis heute kaum Erkenntnisse hinsichtlich der empirischen Relevanz des Kindesunterhaltes vor. ...
2014| Bastian Hartmann
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SOEPpapers 659 / 2014
We document the spatial diffusion of Friedrich Froebel’s radical invention of kindergartens in 19th-century Germany. The first kindergarten was founded at Froebel’s birthplace. Early spatial diffusion can be explained by cultural proximity, measured by historical dialect similarity, to Froebel’s birthplace. This result is robust to the inclusion of higher order polynomials in geographic distance and ...
2014| Stefan Bauernschuster, Oliver Falck
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SOEPpapers 658 / 2014
This paper investigates the short-term effects of a reduction in the length of high school on students' personality traits using a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment. Starting in 2001, academic-track high school (Gymnasium) was reduced from nine to eight years in most of Germany's federal states, leaving the overall curriculum unchanged. This enabled ...
2014| Sarah Dahmann, Silke Anger
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SOEPpapers 657 / 2014
Social norms are central to theoretical accounts of longitudinal person-environment transactions. On the one hand, individuals are thought to select themselves into social roles that fit their personality. On the other hand, it is assumed that individuals' personality is transformed by the socializing pressure of norm demands. These two transactional directions were investigated in a large and eterogeneous ...
2014| Jaap J. A. Denissen, Hannah Ulferts, Oliver Lüdke, Peter M. Muck, Denis Gerstorf
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SOEPpapers 656 / 2014
Immigrants in many countries have lower employment rates and earnings than natives. We study whether the option to naturalize improves immigrant assimilation. The empirical analysis relies on two major immigration reforms in Germany, acountry with a weak record of immigrant integration. Using discontinuities in the reforms' eligibility rules, we find few returns of citizenship for men, but substantial ...
2014| Christina Gathmann, Nicolas Keller
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SOEPpapers 655 / 2014
Despite widespread support from policy makers, funding agencies, and scientific journals, academic researchers rarely make their research data available to others. At the same time, data sharing in research is attributed a vast potential for scientific progress. It allows the reproducibility of study results and the reuse of old data for new research questions. Based on a systematic review of 98 scholarly ...
2014| Benedikt Fecher, Sascha Friesike, Marcel Hebing