SOEPpapers

Assessing Intergenerational Earnings Persistence among German Workers

In this study we assess the relationship between father and son earnings among (West) German Workers. To reduce the lifecycle and attenuation bias a novel sampling procedure is developed and applied to the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984-2006. Our preferred point estimate indicates an intergenerational earnings elasticity of 1/3 .

Private Retirement Savings in Germany: The Structure of Tax Incentives and Annuitization

The present paper studies the growth, welfare and efficiency consequences of the recent introduction of tax-favored retirement accounts in Germany in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic lifespan and labor income uncertainty. We focus on the implicit differential taxation of specific savings motives, the mandatory annuitization of benefits and the impact of special ...

Unemployment as a Social Norm in Germany

This paper investigates the relationship between the subjective well-being of both the employed and unemployed and regional unemployment rates. While employed men suffer from regional unemployment, unemployed men are significantly less negatively affected. This is consistent with a social-norm effect of unemployment in Germany. We find no evidence of such an offsetting effect for women.

Risk-Averse by Nation or by Religion? Some Insights on the Determinants of Individual Risk Attitudes

Research findings have proven that the willingness to take risks is distributed heterogeneously among individuals. In the general public, there is a widely held notion that individuals of certain nationalities tend to hold certain typical risk preferences. Furthermore, religious beliefs are thought to explain differences in risk-preparedness on the individual level. We analyze these two possible determinants ...

Adaptation to Income over Time: A Weak Point of Subjective Well-Being

This article holds the view that intertemporal comparisons of subjective well-being measures are only meaningful when the underlying standards of judgment are unaltered. This is a weak point of such measures. The study investigates the change in the satisfaction judgments resulting from adaptation to income over time. Adaptation is defined to be desensitization (sensitization) to the hedonic effect ...

Analyse der Panelausfälle im Sozio-oekonomischen Panel SOEP

Nonresponse stellt ein ernstzunehmendes Problem für die Möglichkeit dar, von einer Stichprobe auf die Grundgesamtheit zu schließen. Durch Nonresponse verringert sich zunächst die Fallzahl der Stichprobe, sodass sich die Effizienz der Schätzer der Grundgesamtheitsparameter im Vergleich zu einer Stichprobe ohne Nonresponse verringert. Zudem besteht die Gefahr der Verzerrung der Schätzer, wenn sich Teilnehmer ...

Theorie und Empirie über den Wirkungszusammenhang zwischen sozialer Herkunft, kulturellem und sozialem Kapital, Bildung und Einkommen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Die vorliegende Arbeit leistet einen Beitrag zur aktuellen Bildungsdebatte und knüpft an die Theorie des Soziologen Pierre Bourdieus an: untersucht wird, ob und inwiefern die soziale Herkunft eines jungen Menschen in Deutschland sein Einkommen determiniert. Neben der Darlegung theoretischer und ökonometrischer Konzepte wird für die Jahre 2001 und 2005 für die Gesamtstichprobe bzw. für die Kohorte der ...

Gender-Specific Effects of Unemployment on Family Formation: A Cross-National Perspective

This paper investigates the impact of unemployment on the propensity to start a family. Unemployment is accompanied by bad occupational prospects and impending economic deprivation, placing the well-being of a future family at risk. I analyze unemployment at the intersection of state-dependence and the reduced opportunity costs of parenthood, distinguishing between men and women across a set of welfare ...

The Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Early Childhood

The prevalence and importance of children's physical health problems have been increasingly recognized in recent years. Physical health problems of children such as obesity, motor impairment and chronic diseases cause social costs. Further, they can lead directly to adult physical health problems, which cause additional social costs. This paper examines the intergenerational link and transmission of ...

25 Years of SOEP: Over 25 Years of Cooperation of SOEP's DIW Berlin Survey Group with Infratest Sozialforschung and Bernhard von Rosenbladt

The Returns to Cognitive Abilities and Personality Traits in Germany

We provide the first joint evidence on the relationship between individuals' cognitive abilities, their personality and earnings for Germany. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we employ scores from an ultra-short IQ-test and a set of measures of personality traits, namely locus of control, reciprocity and all basic items from the Five Factor Personality Inventory. Our estimates ...

Das enttäuschte Versprechen der Integration: Migrantennachkommen in Frankreich und Deutschland

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit den sozialstrukturellen Voraussetzungen, die der Dynamik bzw. dem Ausbleiben von Protestverhalten zu Grunde liegen. Ausgehend von drei theoretischen Erklärungsansätzen wird empirisch anhand von repräsentativen Mikrodaten gezeigt, dass die Konzeption der Integration der Migrantennachkommen durch die Staatsbürgerschaft und die Schule in Frankreich als ein Versprechen ...

Changes in Immigrants' Body Mass Index with Their Duration of Residence in Germany

This paper investigates how immigrants' Body Mass Index (BMI) changes with increasing years since migration in Germany. The data are drawn from three waves (2002, 2004, and 2006) of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). The results indicate a clear increase of the BMI with additional years in Germany for men and women.

"How Many Hours Would you Want to Work a Week?": Job Quality and the Omitted Variables Bias in Labour Supply Models

This paper sets out to provide an understanding of how individuals form their preferences over the extent of their paid work involvement - their working time preferences - in different work environments and societal contexts. The main objective of the empirical analysis is to investigate how preferences of this kind are constructed at the individual level and adapted over time following changes in ...

Leben außerhalb Deutschlands: eine Machbarkeitsstudie zur Realisierung von Auslandsbefragungen auf Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP)

Mit der Pilotstudie „Leben außerhalb Deutschlands“ beschreitet die Längsschnittstudie Sozio-oekonomisches Panel (SOEP) absolutes methodisches Neuland, indem versucht wird, die Adressen ausgewanderter Teilnehmer des deutschen Haushaltspanels SOEP im Ausland zu recherchieren und die Auswanderer mit Hilfe eines eigens entwickelten Fragebogens zu den Hintergründen ihres grenzüberschreitenden Umzugs schriftlich ...

Labour Market Integration and the Transition to Parenthood: A Comparison of Germany and the UK

The aim of this paper is to investigate the hypothesis that after leaving the educational system, labour market integration has a causal effect on first-birth decisions. The analysis focuses on two major research questions: First, how is the timing of first parenthood associated with previous labour market performance? Second, can differences in first birth-risks be related to labour market performance? ...

Does Distance Determine Who Attends a University in Germany?

We analyze the role of distance from a university in the decision to attend higher education in Germany. Students who live near a university can avoid moving and the increased living expenses by commuting. Thus, transaction cost arguments would suggest that the greater the distance to the nearest university, the lower the participation in higher education. We analyse this hypothesis by combining data ...

Financial Risk Aversion and Household Asset Diversification

This paper explores the relationship between risk attitude and asset diversification in household portfolios. We first examine the impact of manifested risk aversion on the total number of distinct assets held in a portfolio (naive diversification). The second part of the paper focuses on a more sophisticated strategy of diversification and asks whether financial theory is compatible with observed ...

Zur Erhebung des adaptiven Verhaltens von zwei- und dreijährigen Kindern im Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP)

Das SOEP baut seit dem Jahr 2003 das Erhebungsinstrumentarium für den Bereich der frühen Kindheit systematisch aus. Dieser Beitrag berichtet über die instrumentelle Güte eines 20 Items umfassenden Mütterfragebogens zum adaptiven Verhalten von zwei bis dreijährigen Kindern (VABS) in den Bereichen Sprache, Alltagsfertigkeiten, Motorik und soziale Beziehungen, der erstmals im Jahr 2005 eingesetzt wurde. ...

Examining the Gender Wealth Gap in Germany

Welfare-oriented analyses of economic outcome measures such as income and wealth generally rest on the assumption of pooled and equally shared resources among all household members. Yet the lack of individual-level data hampers the distribution of income and wealth within the ousehold context. Based on unique individual-level wealth data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this paper challenges ...