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MillionärInnen sind zufriedener mit ihrem Leben als der Durchschnitt der Bevölkerung: Interview

MillionärInnen unter dem Mikroskop: Datenlücke bei sehr hohen Vermögen geschlossen – Konzentration höher als bisher ausgewiesen

Personen mit Vermögen in Millionenhöhe waren bislang in Bevölkerungsbefragungen kaum vertreten – entsprechend wenig wusste man über sie. Auch blieb das exakte Ausmaß der Vermögenskonzentration unklar. Das Sozio-oekonomische Panel (SOEP) hat nun eine Spezialstichprobe integriert, in der Menschen mit hohen Vermögen stark überrepräsentiert sind, um die bisherige Datenlücke zu schließen. Neue Berechnungen ...

Millionaires under the Microscope: Data Gap on Top Wealth Holders Closed: Wealth Concentration Higher than Presumed

Individuals with assets in the millions of euros have been underrepresented in population surveys and accordingly little has been known about them. As a result, the full extent of wealth concentration in Germany was unknown. To close the existing data gap, the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) integrated a special sample in which individuals with high assets are overrepresented. New calculations using this ...

Wage Risk and Portfolio Choice: The Role of Correlated Returns

From standard portfolio-choice theory it is well-understood that background risk, overwhelmingly due to wage risk, is one of the central determinants of individuals’ portfolio composition: higher background risk reduces risky investments. However, if background risk is negatively correlated with financial market risk, higher background risk implies more risky investment. We quantify the influence of ...

Hours Risk and Wage Risk: Repercussions over the Life-Cycle

We decompose permanent earnings risk into contributions from hours and wage shocks. To distinguish between hours shocks, modeled as innovations to the marginal disutility of work, and labor supply reactions to wage shocks we formulate a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply. Both permanent wage and hours shocks are important to explain earnings risk, but wage shocks have greater relevance. ...

Public Health Insurance and Entry into Self-Employment

We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the self-employed, who usually buy private health insurance. Private health insurance contributions are relatively low for the young ...

Risk Preference and Entrepreneurial Investment at the Top of the Wealth Distribution

We present first evidence how individual risk preferences shape entrepreneurial investment among the very wealthy using novel survey data from the top of the wealth distribution, which have been added to the 2019 German Socio-economic Panel Study. The data include private wealth balance sheets, in particular the value of own private business assets, and a standard measure of risk tolerance. We find that ...

Improving the Coverage of the Top-Wealth Population in the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

We have developed and implemented a new sampling strategy to better represent very wealthy individuals in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our strategy is based on the empirical regularity that the very wealthy have at least part of their assets invested in businesses, and that businesses document shares of relevant shareholders in their books. Our results show that combined analysis of the ...

Verbesserung der Forschungsdateninfrastruktur im Bereich Hochvermögender mit dem Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP)

Im fünften Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der Bundesregierung wurde darauf hingewiesen, dass die Datenlage im Bereich hoher Vermögen unzureichend sei (BMAS, 2017). Zur Verbesserung der Datenlage haben wir eine neue Sampling-Strategie entwickelt und im Feld implementiert. In der gezogenen Stichprobe sind Personen mit hohem Vermögen überrepräsentiert. Die neue Stichprobe wird entsprechend in das Sozio-oekonomische ...

Public Health Insurance and Entry into Self-Employment

We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the self-employed, who usually buy private health insurance. Private health insurance contributions are relatively low for the young ...