SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

Basic Income - From Vision to Creeping Transformation of the Welfare State

A Tale of Two Data Sets: Comparing German Administrative and Survey Data Using Wage Inequality as an Example

The IAB’s Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) are the two data sets most commonly used to analyze wage inequality in Germany. While the SIAB is based on administrative reports by employers to the social security system, the SOEP is a survey data set in which respondents self-report their wages. Both data sources have their specific advantages and ...

Income Growth in the United Kingdom during Late Career and after Retirement: Growing Inequalities after Deindustrialisation, Educational Expansion and Development of the Knowledge-based Economy

This article shows how late-life incomes from work and pensions evolved in the United Kingdom between 1991 and 2007, the year the Great Recession began. Our main contribution comes from focusing on changes across cohorts in different educational groups while also considering the gender divide. Our statistical analyses based on the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) suggest that deindustrialisation, ...

The Transition to Grandparenthood: No Consistent Evidence for Change in the Big Five Personality Traits and Life Satisfaction

Intergenerational relations have received close attention in the context of population aging and increased childcare provision by grandparents. However, few studies have investigated the psychological consequences of becoming a grandparent. In a preregistered test of grandparenthood as a developmental task in middle and older adulthood, we used representative panel data from the Netherlands (N = 563) ...

Drivers of Participation Elasticities across Europe: Gender or Earner Role within the Household?

We compute participation tax rates across the EU and find that work disincentives inherent in tax–benefit systems largely depend on household composition and the individual’s earner role within the household. We then estimate participation elasticities using an IV group estimator that enables us to investigate the responsiveness of individuals to work incentives. We contribute to the literature on ...

Is the First Language a Resource, an Obstacle, or Irrelevant for Language Minority Students’ Education?

Successful integration into the education system is of major importance for the future prospects of immigrants and their children as well as for the social cohesion and viability of the receiving societies. Language is generally viewed as an important aspect of this integration. Whereas there is widespread agreement that the language of the residence country (L2) is crucial for students’ educational ...

Gleichstellungsimpuls BEEG? Erwerbsverläufe werdender Mütter vor und nach der Elternzeitreform von 2007

Mit der Einführung des Bundeselterngeld- und Elternzeitgesetz (BEEG) im Jahr 2007 wurde der Familienpolitik in Deutschland ein Paradigmenwechsel bescheinigt, da erstmals Individuen an die Stelle von Familien in den Fokus der Unterstützungsmaßnahmen rückten. Aus der Familien-forschung liegen bereits einhellige Befunde vor. Zwar kann das BEEG zur Förderung der Geschlechtergleichstellung beitragen, doch ...

Inequality and Its Drivers in Germany, 1840-1914

First Time around: Local Conditions and Multi-dimensional Integration of Refugees

We study the effect of local unemployment and attitudes towards immigrants at the time of arrival on refugees’ multi-dimensional integration outcomes. We leverage a centralized allocation policy in Germany where refugees were centrally assigned to live in specific counties. To measure sentiments of native residents towards immigrants, we use geo-coded Twitter data, which provides our “negative sentiment ...

Change in Personal Culture over the Life Course

Prior literature finds stability in personal culture, such as attitudes and values, in individuals’ life courses using short-running panel data. This work has concluded that lasting change in personal culture is rare after formative early years. This conclusion conflicts with a growing body of evidence for changes in personal culture after significant life course transitions, drawing on long-running ...