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SOEPpapers 474 / 2012
Recent studies have found correlations between risk attitudes and several sociodemographic characteristics. In this paper, we deploy an artefactual field experiment and study whether subjects - non-professionals and -financial professionals - are aware of these correlations. This is largely confirmed by our results for all subject groups. We show that the subjects attach informational value to sociodemographic ...
2012| Andrea Leuermann, Benjamin Roth
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SOEPpapers 473 / 2012
This study examines cognitive and non-cognitive skills and their transmission from parents to children as one potential candidate to explain the intergenerational link of socio-economic status. Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we contrast the impact of parental cognitive abilities (fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence) and personality traits (Big Five, ...
2012| Silke Anger
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SOEPpapers 472 / 2012
This paper studies the evolution of life satisfaction over the life course in Germany. It clarifies the causal interpretation of the econometric model by discussing the choice of control variables and the underidentification between age, cohort and time effects. The empirical part analyzes the distribution of life satisfaction over the life course at the aggregated, subgroup and individual level. To ...
2012| Gregori Baetschmann
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SOEPpapers 471 / 2012
We analyze how well-being is related to working time preferences and hours mismatch. Selfreported measures of life satisfaction are used as an empirical approximation of true wellbeing. Our results indicate that well-being is generally lower among workers with working time mismatch. Particularly underemployment is detrimental for well-being. We further provide first evidence on spillovers from the ...
2012| Christoph Wunder, Guido Heineck
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SOEPpapers 470 / 2012
In 1996, statutory sick pay was reduced for private sector workers in Germany. Using the empirical observation that trade union members are dismissed less often than non-members, we construct a model to predict how absence behaviour will respond to the sick pay reform. We show that union members may have stronger incentives to be absent and to react to the cut in sick pay. In the empirical investigation, ...
2012| Laszlo Goerke, Markus Pannenberg
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SOEPpapers 469 / 2012
Chances are high that partners in dual-earner couples do not receive equal occupational returns from long-distance moves, because job opportunities are distributed heterogeneously in space. Which partners are more likely to receive relatively higher returns after moves? Recent research shows the stratification of returns by gender and highlights the importance of gender roles in mobility decisions. ...
2012| Philipp M. Lersch
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SOEPpapers 468 / 2012
This paper shows that within-country happiness inequality has fallen in the majority of countries that have experienced positive income growth over the last forty years, in particular in developed countries. This new stylized fact comes as an addition to the Easterlin paradox, which states that the time trend in average happiness is flat during episodes of long-run income growth. This mean-preserving ...
2012| Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Claudia Senik
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SOEPpapers 467 / 2012
This paper studies the effect of parenthood timing on future wages. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we employ an instrumental variable approach to identify the causal effect of delaying parenthood on wages of mothers and fathers. Consistent with previous studies, we provide evidence for a positive delaying effect on wages. We further study the underlying mechanisms of the wage ...
2012| Michael Kind, Jan Kleibrink
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SOEPpapers 466 / 2012
In order to encourage people to take out voluntary private pensions to supplement decreasing statutory provisions Germany introduced the so-called Riester pensions. The complex design of the new product might have created entry barriers into the market helping to explain the slow adaption path in the eligible population until today. Existing empirical evidence has not properly taken into account the ...
2012| Bettina Lamla
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SOEPpapers 465 / 2012
To examine the influence of working hours on employees' satisfaction, this article uses a large, representative set of panel data from German households (GSOEP). The results show that high working hours and overtime in general do not lead to decreased satisfaction. Rather, increasing working hours and overtime have positive effects on life and job satisfaction, whereas the desire to reduce working ...
2012| Sarah Holly, Alwine Mohnen
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SOEPpapers 464 / 2012
This paper presents and compares trends in income inequality in Switzerland and Germany from 2000 to 2009 using harmonized data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the Swiss Household Panel (SHP). Whereas in Germany inequality has increased substantially during this period, in Switzerland inequality in market incomes has increased onlymarginally and inequality in disposable incomes has decreased ...
2012| Markus M. Grabka, Ursina Kuhn
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SOEPpapers 463 / 2012
The SOEP Group currently is preparing in addition to increasing the size of the core SOEP, to establish a new Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS). This will be established for the period 2012 to 2017 (with a cumulative number of presumably N=5,000 households). Now, in the year 2012, a new subsample is being added for SOEP IS that will also replace the previous SOEP pretest sample. Starting with the 2013 survey, ...
2012| David Richter, Jürgen Schupp
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SOEPpapers 462 / 2012
We estimate the size of inheritance and gift flows in Germany for selected years over the last century, applying the methodology used by Piketty (2011) for France and combining national accounts, tax statistics and survey data (mainly the German Socio-Economic Panel, SOEP). The data clearly supports the finding of a U-shaped evolution. The annual flow of inheritance and gifts was almost 15% of national ...
2012| Christoph Schinke
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SOEPpapers 461 / 2012
Poverty line definitions in use often lack a solid scientific foundation. This paper proposes to exploit data on income satisfaction to construct an evidence-based poverty line. The poverty line is identified by using its assumed unique property to explain income dissatisfaction best among all dichotomizations of income. To this end, several model settings are considered including linear and nonlinear ...
2012| Andos Juhász
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SOEPpapers 460 / 2012
We examine the interplay between changes in the functional distribution of income and the distribution of market income among households. We use micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel as well as macro data from the German Federal Statistical Office from 2002 to 2008. We categorize and evaluate the implications of changes in the functional distribution of income upon the distribution of income ...
2012| Martin Adler, Kai Daniel Schmid
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SOEPpapers 459 / 2012
Following the discussion on reurbanization (changing intra-regional migration patterns), our research project treats transport-related consequences of this spatial development in German city regions. The hypothesis is that reurbanization bears potential to spread environmentally friendly ways of organizing daily mobility - but that the chance ofthose positive effects might be given away, if policy ...
2012| Gesa Matthes
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SOEPpapers 458 / 2012
In this paper I investigate the causal returns to education for different educational groups in Germany by employing a new method by Klein and Vella (2010) that bases identification on the presence of conditional heteroskedasticity. Compared to IV methods, key advantages of this approach are unbiased estimates in the absence of instruments and parameter interpretation that is not bounded to local average ...
2012| Nils Saniter
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SOEPpapers 457 / 2012
This paper examines the question of whether risk aversion of prime-age workers is negatively correlated with human height to a statistically significant degree. A variety of estimation methods, tests and specifications yield robust results that permit one to answer this question in the affirmative. Hausman-Taylor panel estimates, however, reveal that height effects disappear if personality traits and ...
2012| Olaf Hübler
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SOEPpapers 456 / 2012
Drawing on representative household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine the role of an early precursor of entrepreneurial development - parental role models - for the individual decision to become self-employed in the post-unified Germany. The findings suggest that the socialist regime significantly damaged this mechanism of an intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial attitudes ...
2012| Michael Fritsch, Alina Rusakova
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SOEPpapers 455 / 2012
Individuals are expected to mature with increasing age, but it is not yet fully understood which factors contribute to this maturation process. Using data of a representative sample of Germans (N = 14,718) who gave information about their Big Five personality traits twice over a period of 4 years, we identified satisfaction with life, which was reported yearly, as an important variable for explaining ...
2012| Jule Specht, Boris Egloff, Stefan C. Schmukle