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SOEPpapers 634 / 2014
We consider the link between poverty and subjective well-being, and focus in particular on potential adaptation to poverty. We use panel data on almost 45,800 individuals living in Germany from 1992 to 2011 to show first that life satisfaction falls with both the incidence and intensity of contemporaneous poverty. We then reveal that there is little evidence of adaptation within a poverty spell: poverty ...
2014| Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D'Ambrosio, Simone Ghislandi
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SOEPpapers 633 / 2014
In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality has dropped in countries that have experienced income growth (but not in those that did not). Modern growth has reduced the share of both the "very unhappy" and the "perfectly happy". The extension of public amenities has certainly contributed to this greater happiness homogeneity. This ...
2014| Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Claudia Senik
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SOEPpapers 632 / 2014
Fuel poverty measurement consists of two independent parts: firstly, the definition of an adequate fuel poverty line, and secondly, techniques to measure fuel poverty. This paper reviews options for the definition of fuel poverty lines and techniques for fuel poverty measurement. Based on household data from Germany, figures that would result from different fuel poverty lines are derived. Different ...
2014| Peter Heindl
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SOEPpapers 631 / 2014
This paper applies semiparametric regression models to shed light on the relation-ship between body weight and labor market outcomes in Germany. We find conclusive evidence that these relationships are poorly described by linear or quadratic OLS specifications, which have been the main approaches in previous studies. Women's wages and employment probabilities do not follow a linear relationship and ...
2014| Marco Caliendo, Markus Gehrsitz
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SOEPpapers 630 / 2014
Stated survey measures of risk preferences are increasingly being used in the literature, and they have been compared to revealed risk aversion primarily by means of experiments such as lottery choice tasks. In this paper, we investigate educational choice, which involves the comparison of risky future income paths and therefore depends on risk and time preferences. In contrast to experimental settings, ...
2014| Frank M. Fossen, Daniela Glocker
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SOEPpapers 629 / 2014
This paper describes the implementation of a factorial survey within the SOEP-Pretest of 2008 and investigates (1) respondents' comments about the vignettes, (2) interviewers' assessments of respondents comprehension and willingness to answer, and (3) response behavior regarding response time, use of the answering scale, and consistency of evaluations by different age groups and educational background. ...
2014| Carsten Sauer, Katrin Auspurg, Thomas Hinz, Stefan Liebig, Jürgen Schupp
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SOEPpapers 628 / 2014
In this article, we study state dependence in social assistance receipt in Germany using annual survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1995-2011. We show that there is considerable observed state dependence, with an average persistence rate in benefits of 68% compared to an average entry rate of below 4%. To identify a possible structural component in state dependence, ...
2014| Sebastian Königs
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SOEPpapers 627 / 2014
Germany's occupational and sectoral change towards a knowledge-based economy calls for high returns to education. Nevertheless, female graduates are paid much less than their male counterparts. We wonder whether overeducation affects sexes differently and whether this might answer for part of the gender pay gap. We decompose total year of schooling in years of over- (O), required (R), and undereducation ...
2014| Christina Boll, Julian Sebastian Leppin
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SOEPpapers 626 / 2013
The results of a resurvey of non-respondents to the SOEP study carried out in 2006 show that this special effort of reinterviewing was relatively ineffective in two respects. First, the rate of successful conversions of passive to active respondents was low (less than 20 percent). Second, the composition of the longitudinal file did not improve. The same groups that showed high dropout rates in the ...
2013| Jörg-Peter Schräpler, Jürgen Schupp, Gert G. Wagner
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SOEPpapers 625 / 2013
Increasing maternal employment rates engage policies and people for decades. It is pushed but also questioned at the same time depending on whether women are regarded in first line as mothers or workers. In Germany, the male breadwinner model is traditionally favored. The parent's money reform of 2007 is regarded as a first step towards the dual earner - dual carer model by some scholars. Compared ...
2013| Susanne Schmidt
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SOEPpapers 624 / 2013
Shifting taxes from labor income to consumption is regularly suggested as a measure to induce work incentives. We investigate the effect of increases in the Value Added Tax on labor supply and the income distribution in Germany, which is compensated by a revenue-neutral reduction in income-related taxes. Based on a dual data base and a microsimulation model of labor supply behavior, we confirm a general ...
2013| Nico Pestel, Eric Sommer
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SOEPpapers 623 / 2013
We examine differences in altruism and laziness between public sector employees and private sector employees. Our theoretical model predicts that the likelihood of public sector employment increases with a worker·s altruism, and increases or decreases with a workers laziness depending on his altruism. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we find that public sector employees are significantly ...
2013| Robert Dur, Robin Zoutenbier
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SOEPpapers 622 / 2013
Identity can be an important driving force for educational performance. Immigrants and their children face the challenge of identifying with their host country's culture. Thispaper examines whether young immigrants and their children who identify stronger with the German culture are more likely to increase their educational outcomes. I usea concept of ethnic identity which is designed to capture Germanness ...
2013| Anna-Elisabeth Thum
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SOEPpapers 621 / 2013
Based on the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) and the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP), we show that household consumption drops after a child moves out of a household, while at the same time, per capita consumption increases significantly. Parents approximately upgrade their personal lifestyle up to the level of childless peers after all children are gone and save only a small ...
2013| Simon Rottke, Alexander Klos
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SOEPpapers 620 / 2013
This paper uses Hierarchical Bayes Models to model and estimate spatial health effects in Germany. We combine rich individual-level household panel data from the German SOEP with administrative county-level data to estimate spatial county-level health dependencies. As dependent variable we use the generic, continuous, and quasi-objective SF12 health measure. We find strong and highly significant spatial ...
2013| Peter Eibich, Nicolas R. Ziebarth
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SOEPpapers 619 / 2013
Die Ungleichheit der Einkommensverteilung hat nicht zuletzt deshalb stark zugenommen, weil die Bezieher von Spitzeneinkommen überproportional hohe Einkommenszuwächse erzielten. Vor allem der mittlerweile immense Abstand der Gehälter von Topmanagern zu den von Normalverdienern wird in Öffentlichkeit und Wissenschaft intensiv diskutiert. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt die Topmanager-Vergütungen in den ...
2013| Hagen Krämer
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SOEPpapers 618 / 2013
Although it seems evident that occupations affect health, effect estimates are scarce. We use a job characteristics matrix linked to German longitudinal data spanning 26 years to characterize occupations by their physical and psychosocial burdens. Employing a dynamic model to control for factors that simultaneously affect health and selection into occupations, we find that manual work and low job control ...
2013| Bastian Ravesteijn, Hans van Kippersluis, Eddy van Doorslaer
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SOEPpapers 617 / 2013
A popular argument for a federal minimum wage is that it will prevent in-work poverty and reduce income inequality. We examine this assertion for Germany, a welfare state with a relative generous means-tested social minimum and high marginal tax rates. Our analysis is based on a microsimulation model that accounts for the interactions between wages, the tax-benefit system and net incomes at the household ...
2013| Kai-Uwe Müller, Viktor Steiner
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SOEPpapers 616 / 2013
We analyzed whether individuals reared in institutions differ in their general life satisfaction from people raised in their families. The data comprised of 19,210 German adults (51.5% female) aged from 17 to 101 years and were provided by the SOEP, an ongoing, nationally representative longitudinal study in Germany. Compared to people raised in families, individuals reared in institutions reported ...
2013| David Richter, Sakari Lemola
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SOEPpapers 615 / 2013
In Germany, formal child care coverage rates have increased markedly over the past few decades. The expansion in coverage is particularly pronounced for under 3 year-olds. The present paper is concerned with how mothers' mental and physical health is affected by whether they place their child in formal day care or not. Furthermore, the effects of formal child care usage on mother-child interaction ...
2013| Alexandra Kröll, Rainald Borck