SOEP Research: Inequality and Mobility

Ukrainian Refugees: Nearly Half Intend to Stay in Germany for the Longer Term

Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced by the Russian war on Ukraine, with over one million alone coming to Germany since the beginning of the war. Data from the second survey wave of the IAB-BiB/FReDA-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Ukrainian Refugees in Germany study show that as of the beginning of 2023, an increasing share of Ukrainian refugees plan on staying in Germany for the longer term. Around three ...

Shlomo Yitzhaki (1944–2023): In Memoriam

Pandemic Depression: COVID-19 and the Mental Health of the Self-Employed

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these ...

Closing the Gaps? The Impact of Student Aid Eligibility on Application Behavior to Higher Education

This study examines how conditional aid eligibility influences students’ application behaviors using extensive data from the French national application platform, Admission Post Bac (APB). Employing a generalized difference-in differences approach, we analyze the impact of an exogenous change in the income threshold for financial aid eligibility. Our primary focus is on high-achieving students, a...

The Short- and Medium-term Distributional Effects of the German Minimum Wage Reform

This study quantifies the distributional effects of the minimum wage introduced in Germany in 2015. Using detailed Socio-Economic Panel survey data, we assess changes in the hourly wages, working hours, and monthly wages of employees who were entitled to be paid the minimum wage. We employ a difference-in-differences analysis, exploiting regional variation in the “bite” of the minimum wage. At the ...

Expansion of the social and spatial research data infrastructure SoRa: FAIR, intelligent, integrative (SoRa+)

The interdisciplinary linking of data from different sources from different knowledge disciplines through linked (research) data infrastructure services has become more and more important. As part of the pioneering project “Social and Spatial Research Data Infrastructure (SoRa),” a technical and organizational infrastructure was developed to ensure the prototypical linking of the research data...

Unveiling Wealth and Income Inequalities

The 2-day workshop, supported by the German Research Foundation, will bring together researchers to discuss and exchange ideas on critical issues surrounding wealth and income inequalities. Featured presentations will highlight work on a wide range of topics, including savings and wealth accumulation, measuring income inequality and poverty, long-run dynamics of income and wealth distributions,...

Accounting for Pension Wealth, the Missing Rich and Under-coverage: A Comprehensive Wealth Distribution for Germany

This study constructs a comprehensive wealth distribution for Germany to inform debate in Germany and internationally on the distribution of wealth including pension entitlements. We estimate the net present value of pension wealth in Germany in 2012 and 2017 using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data. When including pension wealth, German households’ wealth-income ratio increases from 570% to 850% in ...

Inequality and Top Incomes

This chapter comprises three main parts. The first part is about data sources, the definitions of income, and the methodologies used to estimate top income shares. Both the standard sources and methods used by the traditional top income studies are described. Further, new developments that employ new sources and estimation approaches are added, a detailed survey of the top-correction methods for surveys ...

Who Opts Out? The Customisation of Marriage in the German Matrimonial Property Regime

This study examines the prevalence of marital contracts across marriage cohorts (1990–2019) in Germany. We further investigate the characteristics of spouses who signed a marital contract. Using cross-sectional data from the German Family Panel (pairfam, 2018/19), we employ complementary log–log and multinomial logistic regression models to predict the prevalence and the type of marital contracts. ...