SOEP Research: Subjective Well-Being, Personality, Health

Labor Market Entry Dynamics and Mental Health Outcomes among Young People with and without Disability

Young people with disability face significant barriers to stable employment. Yet, little is known about how early labor market experiences shape their long-term mental health. This study examines associations between early career insecurity and subsequent mental health trajectories, focusing on disability status as a key axis of inequality. We use nationally representative longitudinal data from the ...

The Rise in Absenteeism in 2022 Is Only Partly Due to Electronic Sick Notes

In Germany, employee absences due to illness rose sharply, particularly in 2022. Various sources argue that the introduction of the electronic certificate of incapacity for work (eAU) caused this. Official data previously did not include absences that were not reported to health insurance providers; since the introduction of the eAU, this is no longer the case. This gap does not exist in Socio-Economic ...

How a Mismatch Between Actual and Desired Fertility Relates to Well-Being Across Adulthood

Introduction Most people want two or more children, but many do not realize their fertility desires. At the same time, recent studies suggest that up to 15% of parents regret having children. To investigate how fertility mismatch relates to well-being (i.e., affect balance, life satisfaction, family life satisfaction, and work satisfaction), this preregistered study used nationally representative cross-sectional ...

Social Media: Population Favors Regulation—but Ban Only for Those up to the Age of 12

Social media usage by children and young people is an increasingly controversial topic. The focus is on risks, opportunities, and possible regulations. Politicians from all relevant parties are now open to a social media ban up to a certain age; the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs has set up a commission of experts. Based on a short survey in the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), conducted in September ...

Majority of the population sees both risks and opportunities in social media

Beyond Overall Income Inequality: Racial Income Gaps and Health Disparities

In this paper, we combine Census data with death records to examine the relationship between income inequality and race-specific mortality across 5,565 municipalities in Brazil. We find that overall income inequality is strongly associated with Non-White mortality but not with White mortality. To understand this disparity, we decompose the Gini coefficient and find that the racial income gap accounts ...

Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Public Health and Social Measures in Camps and Camp-Like Settings: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Analysis

Objectives: This study examines unintended consequences (UIC) of public health and social measures (PHSM) in camps and camp-like settings and assesses the pathways through which these UIC arise. Methods: We conducted a systematic review and conceptual analysis of UIC from PHSM aimed at preventing SARS-CoV-2 spread in these settings. PHSM were classified using the WHO taxonomy and the CONSEQUENT framework ...

Heterogeneity in Gender Differences in Self-Reported Political Preferences, Trust, and Well-Being across 39 European Countries

Previous research suggests that women tend to self-report higher life satisfaction and happiness, lower health status and trust, and more left-leaning political preferences than men. We revisit the gender gap in these outcome variables using random-effects meta-analysis, aggregating data across 39 countries surveyed in the European Social Survey (n ≈ 500,000). Measured in Cohen’s d units, women, on ...

Personality in the Classroom: Interactions of Parental SES and Students’ Big Five in Predicting School Performance

While socioeconomic status (SES) and personality have both been identified as relevant predictors of academic achievement, little is known about their possible interplay in predicting school performance. The present study used the latent moderated structural equations (LMS) method to investigate latent interactions between familial SES and parent-rated Big Five in a sample of German high school students ...

Stress and Resilience in the Labor Market