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SOEPpapers 594 / 2013
We demonstrate that interpersonal comparisons lead to "keeping up with the Joneses"-behavior. Using annual household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the causal effect of changes in reference consumption, defined as the consumption level of all households who are perceived to be richer, on household savings and consumption. When controlling for own income, an increase in reference ...
2013| Moritz Drechsel-Grau, Kai D. Schmid
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SOEPpapers 593 / 2013
Unemployment continues to be one of the major challenges in industrialized societies. Aside from its economic dimensions and societal repercussions, questions concerning the individual experience of unemployment have recently attracted increasing attention. Although many studies have documented the detrimental effects of unemployment for subjective well-being, they overwhelmingly focus on life satisfaction ...
2013| Christian von Scheve, Frederike Esche, Jürgen Schupp
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SOEPpapers 592 / 2013
In Germany, inequality of net equivalized income increased noticeably in the first half of the new millennium. We aim to identify the main drivers of this rise in income inequality since the early 1990s. We provide a broad overview of the circumstances under which inequality evolved, i.e. which changes in the German economy are most likely to provide an explanation for changes in income concentration. ...
2013| Kai Daniel Schmid, Ulrike Stein
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SOEPpapers 591 / 2013
Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the causal effects of music training on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how long-term music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality, time use and ambition using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our findings suggest ...
2013| Adrian Hille, Jürgen Schupp
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SOEPpapers 590 / 2013
Major nuclear accidents as recently in Fukushima set nuclear power plant security at the top of the public agenda. Using data of the German Socio-Economic Panel we analyze the effects of the Fukushima accident and a subsequent government decision on nuclear power phase-out on several measures of subjective perception in Germany. In the light of current political debates about the strategic orientation ...
2013| Felix Richter, Malte Steenbeck, Markus Wilhelm
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SOEPpapers 589 / 2013
We investigate whether non-cognitive skills - in particular Locus of Control - are important determinants of the labour market processes at the low-wage margin. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate dynamic multinomial logit models with random effects and investigate whether Locus of Control influences the probability of being higher-paid or low-paid as well as the probability ...
2013| Daniel D. Schnitzlein, Jens Stephani
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SOEPpapers 588 / 2013
Based on nationally representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) we analyze the intergenerational transmission of economic and social (dis-)advantages in Germany, the United States and Great Britain. We test with the hypotheses that the extent and the determinants of intergenerational income ...
2013| Veronika V. Eberharter
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SOEPpapers 587 / 2013
Standard household economics assumes that couples pool their incomes and share the sum equally, which is a necessary prerequisite for computing equivalent incomes and hence all statements about the distribution of personal incomes and income poverty. However, since cohabitation without marriage is on the rise and since income pooling is less frequent among cohabiting couples, income is also pooled ...
2013| Susanne Elsas
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SOEPpapers 586 / 2013
The 16 German federal states introduced smoking bans on different dates during 2007 and 2008. These bans restricted smoking in enclosed public places, particularly in restaurants and bars. This study examines the effects of smoking bans on self-assessed health. Using data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), difference-in-differences estimations provide evidence for health improvements for the population ...
2013| Daniel Kuehnle, Christoph Wunder
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SOEPpapers 585 / 2013
Evidence of assortative mating according to personality was reported in a previous SOEP-based study (Rammstedt & Schupp, 2008). Based on population representative data of almost 7,000 couples, high levels of congruence between spouses were found, which increased with marriage duration. Almost 5,000 of these couples were tracked over a five-year period with personality assessed at the beginning and ...
2013| Beatrice Rammstedt, Frank M. Spinath, David Richter, Jürgen Schupp
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SOEPpapers 584 / 2013
Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a national sample spanning the adult lifespan, age differences in anger and sadness were explored. The cross-sectional and longitudinal findings consistently suggest that the frequency of anger increases during young adulthood, but then shows a steady decrease until old age. By contrast, the frequency of sadness remains stable over most of adulthood ...
2013| Ute Kunzmann, David Richter, Stefan C. Schmukle
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SOEPpapers 583 / 2013
This paper proposes a dynamic life cycle model of health risks, employment, early retirement, and wealth accumulation in order to analyze the health-related risks of consumption and old age poverty. In particular, the model includes a health process, the interaction between health and employment risks, and an explicit modeling of the German public insurance schemes. I rely on a dynamic programming ...
2013| Daniel Kemptner
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SOEPpapers 582 / 2013
Self-reported satisfaction measures respond to a great variety of socio-demographic characteristics as well as the job and living environment. In this paper we ask whether the recent financial market crisis has caused a deterioration of satisfaction not only for the unemployed but also for those out of the labour force and especially those in employment. The focus of our analyses is on the pattern ...
2013| Antje Mertens, Miriam Beblo
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SOEPpapers 581 / 2013
This paper examines the effect of changing labor market conditions and individual characteristics on early labor market career results. More precisely, it tackles the chances for a transition from fixed-term to permanent employment during the professional start-up phase and explores explaining factors. Longitudinal data of the SOEP (survey years 1990-2010) are used to conduct an empirical investigation. ...
2013| Marie-Christine Fregin
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SOEPpapers 580 / 2013
A large literature in behavioral and social sciences has found that human wellbeing follows a U-shape over age. Some theories have assumed that the U-shape is caused by unmet expectations that are felt painfully in midlife but beneficially abandoned and experienced with less regret during old age. In a unique panel of 132,609 life satisfaction expectations matched to subsequent realizations, I find ...
2013| Hannes Schwandt
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SOEPpapers 579 / 2013
This paper exploits data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to re-examine the gender wage gap in Germany on the basis of inequality-adjusted measures of wage differentials which fully account for gender differences in pay distributions. The inequality-adjusted gender pay gap measures are significantly larger than suggested by standard indicators, especially in East Germany. Women appear penalized ...
2013| Ekaterina Selezneva, Philippe Van Kerm
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SOEPpapers 578 / 2013
This paper will contribute to a growing body of research on the concept of public service motivation and its effects. It addresses two important though still largely unexplored questions: How stable or dynamic are prosocial attitudes, and do differences among employees or the individual changes in their attitudes over time matter, in order to explain the performance of prosocial behavior? To learn ...
2013| Alexander Kroll, Dominik Vogel
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SOEPpapers 577 / 2013
Manski's partial identification allows less restrictive, therefore, more credible assumptions than the assumption of random treatment assignment to solve the evaluationproblem. In this article the theory of partial identification is applied to the welfare effect of the euro cash changeover. When evaluating the impact of the euro cash changeover on individual welfare, Wunder et al. (2008) face the evaluation ...
2013| Sara Bleninger
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SOEPpapers 576 / 2013
The effects of childbirth on future labor market outcomes are a key issue for policy discussion. This paper implements a dynamic treatment approach to estimate the effect of having the first child now versus later on future employment for the case of Germany, a country with a long maternity leave coverage. Effect heterogeneity is assessed by estimating ex post outcome regressions. Based on SOEP data, ...
2013| Bernd Fitzenberger, Katrin Sommerfeld, Susanne Steffes
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SOEPpapers 575 / 2013
The present study calculates variable, cross-sectional as well as longitudinal equivalence scales on the basis of the German 1984-2010 Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) database for West Germany. It follows the "individual variant" for calculating subjective equivalence scales using "life satisfaction" as a proxy variable for "utility". The cross-sectional scale estimates are characterized by relatively ...
2013| Jürgen Faik