The Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) is a representative, multi-cohort survey that has been running since 1984. Every year, individuals in households throughout Germany are surveyed by our survey institute on behalf of DIW Berlin. These respondents provide information on topics such as their income, employment history, education, and health. Because the same people are surveyed every year, it is possible to track long-term psychological, economic, societal, and social developments. To keep pace with changes in society, random samples are added regularly and the survey is adapted accordingly. The international version of the data contains 95% of the total sample (see “Other editions”, soep-core.v35i).
Title: Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), data from 1984-2018
DOI Find an explanation on the usage of DOI here. : 10.5684/soep-core.v35
Collection period: 1984-2018
Publication date: 01.11.2019
Principal investigators: Stefan Liebig, Jan Goebel, Martin Kroh, Carsten Schröder, Markus Grabka, Jürgen Schupp, Charlotte Bartels, Alexandra Fedorets, Andreas Franken, Jannes Jacobsen, Selin Kara, Peter Krause, Hannes Kröger, Maria Metzing, David Richter, Diana Schacht, Paul Schmelzer, Christian Schmitt, Daniel Schnitzlein, Rainer Siegers, Knut Wenzig, Stefan Zimmermann
Contributor: Kantar Deutschland GmbH (Data Collector)
Population: Persons living in private households in Germany
Amount of households: 18.682
Amount of individuals: 31.997 + 3971 children
Special samples: Citizens of the GDR (1990), Immigration/Migration (1994/95, 2013, 2015), Refugees (seit 2016). See the chapter SOEP-Samples in Detail on the SOEPcompanion for a description of all our samples.
Selection method: All samples of SOEP are multi-stage random samples which are regionally clustered. The respondents (households) are selected by random-walk.
Collection Mode:The interview methodology of the SOEP is based on a set of pre-tested questionnaires for households and individuals. Principally an interviewer tries to obtain face-to-face interviews with all members of a given survey household aged 16 years and over. Additionally one person (head of household) is asked to answer a household related questionnaire covering information on housing, housing costs, and different sources of income. This covers also some questions on children in the household up to 16 years of age, mainly concerning attendance at institutions (kindergarten, elementary school, etc.)
Citation of the Data Set: Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), data for years 1984-2018, version 35, SOEP, 2019, doi:10.5684/soep.v35.
Publications using this file should refer to the above DOI Find an explanation on the usage of DOI here.and cite following references
If you do not exclude the cases of the migration samples in your analysis, then please also cite the following reference:
If you do not exclude the cases of the refugee samples in your analysis, please also cite: IAB-BAMF-SOEP survey of refugees (M3-M5), data for the years 2016-2021,
If you use data from the SOEP-LEE2 surveys, please also cite:
If you would like to refer more specifically, please also cite:
For the SOEP-Core data 1984-2018 (v35) - Wave A to BI - we provide the following versions:
soep-core.v35i (International Scientific Use Version, 95%)
soep-core.v35t (Teaching version)
These datasets are included in SOEP v35, but is also available as individual data sets upon reques:
soep.ddr18 (Living in the GDR)
soep.iab-soep-mig.2018 (Migration samples)
soep.iab-bamf-soep-mig.2018 (Refugee samples)
The new refresher sample, Subsample O, contains 1,000 new households. These were selected in cooperation with BBSR using a new sampling design based on regional data in areas where the “Soziale Stadt” (social city) urban development project is being carried out. Based on the digital data available on the boundaries of the “Soziale Stadt” areas, it was possible to create a new variable going back to the year 2000 that shows whether or not a household’s address is within an area covered by the project (see Variable Description below under 4.4).
We have made the following important changes over and beyond to our normal annual updates:
4.1. Early Childhood
4.2. Your Life in the GDR
4.3. Biography follow-up survey
4.4. New variable SOCURBAN in dataset HBRUTTO
4.5. New variables in dataset EQUIV
4.6. New variables in dataset BIOJOB
5.1. Weighting variable PHRF in the dataset PPATHL
5.2. Variables representing occupational codes
5.3. Educational variables
5.4. Dataset KIDLONG
5.5. Dataset BHKIND
5.6. Dataset BIKIND
5.7. Variable PARID in the dataset PPATHL
5.8. Variable HGOWNER in the dataset HGEN
5.9. Dataset INTERVIEWER
5.10. Dataset BIOAGE17
5.11. Dataset BIOAGEL
(as of April 2020)
Dataset: bioage; variable clref
We detected a label error in the data set bioage in the variable clref that could be misleading when analyzing the data. The labels for values [1] und [2] need to be switched.
stata [de]
label def clref ///
1 "[1] Ja, sowohl spez. Klasse als auch Regelunterricht" ///
2 "[2] Ja, ausschliessl. spez. Klasse fuer gefluechtete Kinder", modify
stata [en]
label def clref ///
1 "[1] Yes, both special class and regular classes" ///
2 "[2] Yes, only special class for refugee children", modify
spss [de]
add value labels clref 1 '[1] Ja, sowohl spez. Klasse als auch Regelunterricht' 2 '[2] Ja, ausschliessl. spez. Klasse fuer gefluechtete Kinder' .
spss [en]
add value labels clref 1 '[1] Yes, both special class and regular classes' 2 '[2] Yes, only special class for refugee children' .
Individual (PAPI) 2018: Field-de Field-en Var-de Var-en
Household (PAPI) 2018: Field-de Field-en Var-de Var-en
Biography (PAPI) 2018: Field-de,en Var-de Var-en
Catch-up Individual (PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Youth (16-17-year-olds, PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Early Youth (13-14-year-olds, PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Pre-teen (11-12-year-olds, PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-en Var-en
Mother and Child (Newborns, PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Mother and Child (2-3-year-olds, PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Mother and Child (5-6-year-olds, PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Parents and Child (7-8-year-olds, PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Mother and Child (9-10-year-olds, PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Deceased Individual (PAPI) 2018: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Grip Strength 2018: Field-de
Please find all sample specific questionnaires of this year and all questionnaires of previous years on this site
2) SOEP-Core – 2018: Sampling, Nonresponse, and Weighting in the Sample O
3) SOEP-Core v35 – PPATHL: Person-Related Meta-Dataset
5) SOEP-Core v35 – HPATHL: Household-Related Meta-Dataset
6) SOEP-Core v35 – PBRUTTO: Person-Related Gross File
7) SOEP-Core v35 – HBRUTTO: Household-Related Gross File
8) SOEP-Core v35 – PGEN: Person-Related Status and Generated Variables
9) SOEP-Core v35 – HGEN: Household-Related Status and Generated Variables
13) SOEP-Core v35 – BIOPAREN: Biography Information for the Parents of SOEP-Respondents
15) SOEP-Core v35 – BIOSIB: Information on Siblings in the SOEP
17) SOEP-Core v35 – BIOAGE17: The Youth Questionnaire
18) SOEP-Core v35 – BIOSOC: Retrospective Data on Youth and Socialization
19) SOEP-Core v35 – BIOJOB: Detailed Information on First and Last Job
20) SOEP-Core v35 – BIOEDU: Data on Educational Participation and Transitions
21) SOEP-Core v35 – BIORESID: Variables on Occupancy and Second Residence
22) SOEP-Core v35 – BIOBIRTH: A Data Set on the Birth Biography of Male and Female Respondents
23) SOEP-Core v35 – BIOTWIN: TWINS in the SOEP
24) SOEP-Core v35 – PFLEGE: Documentation of Generated Person-level Long-term Care Variables
25) SOEP-Core – 2018: Documentation of the Interviewer Dataset (1984 until 2018)
26) SOEP-Core v35 – INTERVIEWER
27) SOEP-Core v35 – LIFESPELL: Information on the Pre- and Post-Survey History of SOEP-Respondents
28) SOEP-Core v35 – MIGSPELL and REFUGSPELL: The Migration-Biographies
29) SOEP-Core v35 – Activity Biography in the Files PBIOSPE and ARTKALEN
30) SOEP-Core v35: Codebook for the EU-SILC-Like Panel for Germany Based on the SOEP
1) Handgreifkraftmessung im Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP) 2006 und 2008
2) The new IAB-SOEP Migration Sample: an introduction into the methodology and the contents
3) The Request for Record Linkage in the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample
5) The Measurement of Labor Market Entries with SOEP Data: Introduction to the Variable EINSTIEG_ARTK
6) Job submission instructions for the SOEPremote System at DIW Berlin – Update 2014
7) SOEP 2015 – Informationen zu den SOEP-Geocodes in SOEP v32
9) Die Vercodung der offenen Angaben zu den Ausbildungsberufen im Sozio-Oekonomischen Panel
10) Das Studiendesign der IAB-BAMF-SOEP Befragung von Geflüchteten
11) Scales Manual IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees in Germany – revised version
12) SOEP 2010 – Preparation of data from the new SOEP consumption module: Editing, imputation, and smoothing
13) SOEP Scales Manual (updated for SOEP-Core v32.1)
17) Multi-Itemskalen im SOEP Jugendfragebogen
20) SOEP-CoV: Project and Data Documentation
22) SOEP 2013 – Documentation of Generated Person-Level Long-Term Care Variables in PFLEGE
23) SOEP-Core v34 – PFLEGE: Documentation of Generated Person-level Long-term Care Variables
26) SOEP-Core v36: Codebook for the EU-SILC-like panel for Germany based on the SOEP
All documentation for filtering can be found on this page