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SOEPpapers 614 / 2013
This study investigates the determinants of women's labor supply in the household context. The main focus is on the effect of a change in male partner's wages on women's work hours. This is linked to the broader question of whether married and cohabiting women make different economic decisions and respond differently to changes in their partners' wages. In addition, this study seeks to connect the ...
2013| Doreen Triebe
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SOEPpapers 613 / 2013
The present paper quantifies the economic consequences of eliminating the system of income splitting in Germany. We apply a dynamic simulation model with overlapping generations where single and married agents have to decide on labor supply and homework facing income and lifespan risk. The numerical exercise computes the resulting welfare changes across households and isolates aggregate efficiency ...
2013| Hans Fehr, Manuel Kallweit, Fabian Kindermann
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SOEPpapers 612 / 2013
Over the last several decades, there has been a widespread decrease in civic engagement coinciding with a breakdown in traditional family structures in many countriesthroughout the developed world. According to Putnam in Bowling alone (2000), however, none of the major declines in civic engagement can be accounted for by the decline in traditional family structures. In this paper, we seek to contribute ...
2013| Timo Hener, Helmut Rainer, Thomas Siedler
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SOEPpapers 611 / 2013
Using harmonized wealth data and a novel decomposition approach, we show that cohort effects exist in the income profiles of asset and debt portfolios for a sample of European countries, the U.S. and Canada. We find that younger households' participation decisions in assets are more responsive to income than older households. Family structure plays a significant role in explaining cross-country differences ...
2013| Eva Sierminska, Karina Doorley
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SOEPpapers 610 / 2013
Grandparents are regular providers of free child care. Similar to other forms of child care, availability of grandparent-provided child care affects fertility and labor force participation of women positively. However, grandparent-provided child care requires residing close to parents or in-laws which may imply costly spatial restrictions. We find that mothers residing close to parents or in-laws have ...
2013| Eva García-Morán, Zoë Kuehn
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SOEPpapers 609 / 2013
Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to reduce work incentives for the lowskilled and to increase durations of unemployment. Standard studies measure work incentives based on annual income concepts. This paper analyzes work incentives inherent in the German tax-benefit system when extending the time horizon to three years (long-term). Participation ...
2013| Charlotte Bartels
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SOEPpapers 608 / 2013
Like many medical studies, the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE·II) is based on a non·random "convenience sample" of self·recruited participants. To study processes of selectivity in BASE·II, we used an identical questionnaire to compare BASE·II with a large, representative reference study, the German Socio·Economic Panel (SOEP), thereby allowing differences in characteristics of participants in BASE·II ...
2013| Denise Saßenroth, Martin Kroh, Gert G. Wagner
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SOEPpapers 607 / 2013
We survey the literature on income mobility, aiming to provide an integrated discussion of mobility within- and between-generations. We review mobility concepts, descriptive devices, measurement methods, data sources, and recent empirical evidence.
2013| Markus Jäntti, Stephen P. Jenkins
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SOEPpapers 606 / 2013
The aggregate Frisch elasticity of labor supply has played a key role in business cycle analysis. This paper develops a statistical aggregation procedure which allows forworker heterogeneity in observables and unobservables and is applicable to an individual labor supply function with non-employment as a possible outcome. Performing a thought experiment in which all offered or paid wages are subject ...
2013| Alois Kneip, Monika Merz, Lidia Storjohann
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SOEPpapers 605 / 2013
We study the link between parental selection and children criminality in a new context. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany experienced an unprecedented temporary drop in fertility driven by economic uncertainty. We exploit this natural experiment to estimate that the children from these (smaller) cohorts are 40 percent more likely to commit crimes. We show that women who gave birth at ...
2013| Arnaud Chevalier, Olivier Marie
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SOEPpapers 604 / 2013
This publication concentrates on the complex interplay between poverty, wealth and life satisfaction. Main areas of life are quantified in a multidimensional approach of poverty and wealth: Individual income, current health, occupational autonomy or employment status and also the mentioned life satisfaction. Data used in this publication were made available by the German Socio Economic Panel Study ...
2013| André Hajek
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SOEPpapers 603 / 2013
The paper gives an overview of two experiments implemented in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) considering the effect of monetary incentives on cross-sectional and longitudinal response propensities. We conclude that the overall effects of monetary incentives on response rates are positive compared to the "classic" SOEP setting, where a charity lottery ticket is offered as an incentive. In the ...
2013| Mathis Schröder, Denise Saßenroth, John Körtner, Martin Kroh, Jürgen Schupp
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SOEPpapers 602 / 2013
This study investigates whether the expansion of day-care places for under-three-year-old children in East and West Germany from 2007 to 2011 has improved the subjective wellbeing for mothers and fathers with a youngest child in this age group. We extend existing cross-sectional country comparisons and single country policy evaluations by comparing regional variations over time in two different contexts ...
2013| Pia S. Schober, Christian Schmitt
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SOEPpapers 601 / 2013
By using longitudinal data the relation between satisfaction with life and unemployment is analyzed in this study. Data used in this publication were made available by the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Berlin. A period from 1998-2009 is evaluated. This publication has two goals. (1) To estimate the effects of voluntary and involuntary ...
2013| André Hajek
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SOEPpapers 600 / 2013
This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points. 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if mental health is included with a six-year lag. It explains more of the variance of life-satisfaction in the population of a country than physical health does, and much more than unemployment ...
2013| Richard Layard, Dan Chisholm, Vikram Patel, Shekhar Saxena
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SOEPpapers 599 / 2013
We study the impact of the Fukushima disaster on people's mental well·being in another industrialized country, more than 5000 miles distant. The meltdown significantlyincreased environmental concerns by 20% among the German population. Subsequent drastic policy action permanently shut down the oldest nuclear reactors, implemented the phase·out of the remaining ones, and proclaimed the transition to ...
2013| Jan Goebel, Christian Krekel, Tim Tiefenbach, Nicolas R. Ziebarth
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SOEPpapers 598 / 2013
We analyze the effect of education on wages using German Socio-Economic Panel data and regional variation in mandatory years of schooling and the supply of schools. This allows us to estimate more than one local average treatment effect and heterogeneous effects for different groups of compliers. Our results are in line with previous studies that do not find an effect of compulsory schooling on wages ...
2013| Daniel A. Kamhöfer, Hendrik Schmitz
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SOEPpapers 597 / 2013
In the case of collective redundancies, employers are forced to regard certain characteristics when deciding who is going to be dismissed. This paper develops a procedure to derive an empirical based weighting scheme between the characteristics relevant for this selection (age, disability, dependencies and tenure). First, panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1991-2010 ...
2013| Michael Kind
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SOEPpapers 596 / 2013
This paper gives an overview of the transformation of the German labor market since the mid-1990s with a special focuson the changing patterns of labor market segmentation or "dualization" of employment in Germany. While labor market duality in Germany can partially be attributed to labor market reforms promoting in particular non-standard forms of employment and allowing for an expansion of low pay, ...
2013| Werner Eichhorst, Verena Tobsch
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SOEPpapers 595 / 2013
In response to the growing burden of obesity, public primary prevention programs against obesity have been widely recommended. Several studies estimated the cost effects of diabetes prevention trials for different countries and found that diabetes prevention can be costeffective. Nevertheless, it is still controversial if prevention conducted in more real-world settings and among people with increased ...
2013| Jan Häußler, Friedrich Breyer