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SOEPpapers 254 / 2009
Using representative and consistent microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) from 1985-2007, we illustrate that capital income (CI = return on financial investments) and imputed rent (IR = return on investments in owner-occupied housing) have become increasingly important sources of economic inequality in Germany over the last two decades. Whereas the operationalization of CI in ...
2009| Joachim R. Frick, Markus M. Grabka
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SOEPpapers 253 / 2009
The economic costs of chronic health conditions and severe illnesses like diabetes, coronary heart disease or cancer are immense. Several clinical trials give information about the importance of individual behaviour for the prevalence of these illnesses. Changes in health relevant behaviour may therefore lead to a decline of avoidable illnesses and related health care costs. In this context, we use ...
2009| Brit S. Schneider, Udo Schneider
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SOEPpapers 252 / 2009
Reliable measures of poverty are an essential statistical tool for public policies aimed at reducing poverty. In this paper we consider the reliability of income poverty measures based on survey data which are typically plagued by missing data and measurement error. Neglecting these problems can bias the estimated poverty rates. We show how to derive upper and lower bounds for the population poverty ...
2009| Cheti Nicoletti, Franco Peracchi, Francesca Foliano
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SOEPpapers 251 / 2009
Do EU citizens have an increased opportunity to improve their position in the distribution of lifetime earnings? To what extent does earnings mobility work to equalize/disequalize longerterm earnings relative to cross-sectional inequality and how does it differ across the EU? Our basic assumption is that mobility measured over a horizon of 8 years is a good proxy for lifetime mobility. We used the ...
2009| Denisa Maria Sologon, Cathal O'Donoghue
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SOEPpapers 250 / 2009
The female share in management positions is quite low in Germany. The higher the hierarchical level, the fewer women there are in such positions. Men have numerous role models to follow whereas women lack this opportunity: In the executive boards of the top 200 private companies in Germany, only 2.5 percent of members are female. Many studies have focused on the influence of human capital and other ...
2009| Simon Fietze, Elke Holst, Verena Tobsch
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SOEPpapers 249 / 2009
According to the National Accounts the German savings rate has increased continuously since 2001 after it fell continuously from 1991. This increase was rather unexpected and hence it is interesting to analyse whether the savings rate of the total population has increased or whether the increase in the aggregated savings rate has been due to the fact that the savings behaviour of certain socio-economic ...
2009| Ulrike Stein
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SOEPpapers 248 / 2009
We evaluate the effects of a reduction in sick pay from 100 to 80% of the wage. Unlike previous literature, apart from absence from work, we also consider effects on doctor/hospital visits and subjective health indicators. We also add to the literature by estimating both switch-on and switch-off effects, because the reform was repealed two years later. We find a two-day reduction in the number of days ...
2009| Patrick A. Puhani, Katja Sonderhof
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SOEPpapers 247 / 2009
This study is the first to estimate mothers' marginal willingness to pay (MWP) for job amenities directly. Its identification strategy relies on German maternity leave length. The key aspect of the maternal leave framework is that mothers can decide whether and when to return to their guaranteed job. Thus, in contrast to previous studies that analyze the job search of employed workers, this framework ...
2009| Christina Felfe
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SOEPpapers 246 / 2009
This paper studies the long-run macroeconomic, distributional and welfare effects of tuition policy and student loans. We therefore form a rich model of risky human capital investment based on the seminal work of Heckman, Lochner and Taber (1998). We extend their original model by variable labor supply, borrowing constraints, idiosyncratic wage risk, uncertain life-span, and multiple schooling decisions. ...
2009| Fabian Kindermann
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SOEPpapers 245 / 2009
In 1999, in Germany, the statutory sick pay level was increased from 80 to 100 percent of foregone earnings for sicknessepisodes of up to six weeks. We show that this reform has led to an increase in average absence days of about 10 percent or one additional day per employee, per year. The estimates are based on SOEP survey data and parametric, nonparametric, and combined matching-regression difference-in-differences ...
2009| Nicolas R. Ziebarth, Martin Karlsson
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SOEPpapers 244 / 2009
This study estimates the reform effects of a reduction in statutory sick pay levels on various outcome dimensions. A federal law reduced the legal obligation of German employers to provide 100 percent continued wages for up to six weeks per sickness episode to 80 percent. This measure increased the ratio of employees having no days of absence by about 7.5 percent. The mean number of absence days per ...
2009| Nicolas R. Ziebarth, Martin Karlsson
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SOEPpapers 243 / 2009
The following study describes for Germany the development of subjective insecurity for the last 25 years. The analyses are focused on war and crime, labor and economy, and finally environment. These domains are often discussed in the context of transformation. Based on the data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) this paper not only covers the question how feelings of insecurity have changed in society ...
2009| Jörg Dittmann
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SOEPpapers 242 / 2009
This paper investigates the association between maternal life satisfaction and the developmental functioning of two- to three-year-old children as well as the socio-emotional behaviorof five- to six-year-old children. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), which allows us to control for a rich set of child and parental characteristics and to use the mother's life satisfaction ...
2009| Eva M. Berger, C. Katharina Spieß
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SOEPpapers 241 / 2009
Taxation changes the expectations of prospective university students about their future level and uncertainty of after-tax income. To estimate the impact of taxes on university enrollment, we develop and estimate a structural microeconometric model, in which a high-school graduate decides to enter university studies if expected lifetime utility from this choice is greater than that anticipated from ...
2009| Frank M. Fossen, Daniela Glocker
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SOEPpapers 240 / 2009
The well-documented positive correlation between income risk and wealth was interpreted as evidence for high amounts of precautionary wealth in various studies. However, the large estimates emerged from pooling non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs without controlling for heterogeneity. This paper provides evidence for Germany based on representative panel data including private wealth balance sheets. ...
2009| Frank M. Fossen, Davud Rostam-Afschar
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SOEPpapers 239 / 2009
Overindebted private households have created economic and political concern. Using measures of relative (over-) indebtedness which relate household income and debt services to different concepts of subsistence levels, this paper investigates whether severe household indebtedness is driven by trigger events such as unemployment, childbirth, divorce, or the death of the partner. Exploiting the panel ...
2009| Matthias Keese
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SOEPpapers 238 / 2009
In the 2008 Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) Pretest, the factorial survey method was tested for the first time for use in the SOEP longitudinal study. In this paper, we describe the construction and application of the vignette module, which has its origins in the field of justice research and is used in particular in the measurement of income justice. We show that the factorial survey method is applicable ...
2009| Carsten Sauer, Stefan Liebig, Katrin Auspurg, Thomas Hinz, Andy Donaubauer, Jürgen Schupp
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SOEPpapers 237 / 2009
Analysen zu Einkommensungleichheit, Armut und Mobilität in Deutschland basieren überwiegend auf den Mikrodaten der amtlichen deutschen Stichprobe der European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) und des wissenschaftsgetragenen Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP). Dabei kommt den EU-SILC-Daten neben ihrer Relevanz für die nationale Berichterstattung eine große internationale Bedeutung ...
2009| Joachim R. Frick, Kristina Krell
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SOEPpapers 236 / 2009
Im Fokus dieses Beitrags steht die empirische Untersuchung der Wohnsituation privater Haushalte in West- und Ostdeutschland seit dem Fall der Mauer 1989. Auf Basis der bevölkerungsrepräsentativen und zeitlich konsistent gemessenen Mikrodaten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) lässt sich belegen, dass die aus der DDR-Wohnungswirtschaft resultierenden signifikanten Unterschiede gegenüber der Situation ...
2009| Joachim R. Frick, Steffi Grimm
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SOEPpapers 235 / 2009
Youth is one of the phases in the life-cycle when some of the most decisive life transitions take place. Entering the labour market or leaving parental home are events with important consequences for the economic well-being of young adults. In this paper, the interrelationship between employment, residential emancipation and poverty dynamics is studied for eight European countries by means of an econometric ...
2009| Sara Ayllón