International SOEP User Conference

It was the crowning glory of the 40th anniversary celebrations: Immediately following the ceremony at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities at Gendarmenmarkt, SOEP held a two-day user conference entitled “The individual and collective responses to a changing world.”

With 15 sessions and 64 presentations, the conference impressively demonstrated the wide range of topics covered by research on SOEP data. What impact does the minimum wage have on regional inequalities? Are employees who internally distance themselves from their work generally more dissatisfied with their lives? Do people worry less about the environment and climate after having a child? These are just some of the many topics presented by participating users.

One of the keynote speakers at the conference, economist Simon Jäger from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston, described the SOEP as a “dataset we all know, adore, and love.” Katharina Pijnenburg from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) agreed. According to Pijnenburg, the BMBF is proud of the SOEP, not least because it always identifies the relevant questions and incorporates a variety of perspectives.

This multidisciplinary perspective is actively practiced in the SOEP, as the conference impressively demonstrated. Every two years, researchers from economics, sociology, political science, psychology and other disciplines present their current research based on SOEP data.

CNEF: Exciting research potential through international panel data

A particular highlight of the conference was the presentation of panel studies from other countries that, like the SOEP, participate in the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF). The project harmonizes extensive data from 16 panel studies worldwide and makes it available to researchers. Representatives of partner studies from Australia, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the USA provided exciting insights into the data sets of their home countries. Dean Lillard, professor at Ohio State University and member of the CNEF advisory board, emphasized the importance of the data set for policy advice.

Finally, C. Katharina Spieß, Director of the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), awarded this year’s Felix Büchel Prize to Denis Gerstorf (Professor of Developmental Psychology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). Gerstorf has spent a large part of his successful career researching with SOEP data. In his acceptance speech, he spoke of how much the SOEP has influenced him as an “eye opener” and “stepping stone.” We wish the same to all SOEP users worldwide who use our data for their research.

In addition to the tentative schedule (PDF, 170.33 KB), find the full program with presentation titles, session chairs, and the abstracts (where available) below:

July 4, 2024 with Parallel Session 1-7, Special Session on CNEF, and Poster Session:

July 5, 2024 with Parallel Sessions 8-15:

Charlotte Bartels, Adriana Cardozo Silva, Markus M. Grabka, Carsten Schröder (program) 

Patricia Axt, Janina Britzke, Jana Nebelin (conference management)

Verena Neumann (SOEP communications manager)

If you have any further questions please contact the local organizers at: soep2024@diw.de