The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study is a wide-ranging representative longitudinal study of private households, located at the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW Berlin. Every year, there were nearly 15,000 households, and more than 25,000 persons sampled by the fieldwork organization TNS Infratest Sozialforschung. The data provide information on all household members, consisting of Germans living in the Eastern and Western German States, foreigners, and immigrants to Germany. The Panel was started in 1984. Some of the many topics include household composition, occupational biographies, employment, earnings, health and satisfaction indicators. As early as June 1990—even before the Economic, Social and Monetary Union—SOEP expanded to include the states of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), thus seizing the rare opportunity to observe the transformation of an entire society. Also immigrant samples were added in 1994/95 and 2013/2015 to account for the changes that took place in Germany society. Two samples of refugees were introduced in 2016. Further new samples were added in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. The survey is constantly being adapted and developed in response to current social developments. The international version contains 95% of all cases surveyed.
Conclusion: International Science Use Version of the original SOEP data (95% version of the data set http://doi.org/10.5684/soep.v33). This data set can be used worldwide.
Title: Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), data from 1984-2016, International Scientific Use Version
DOI: 10.5684/soep.v33i
Collection period: 1984-2016
Publication date: 2017-12-01
Principal investigator: Jürgen Schupp, Jan Goebel, Martin Kroh, Carsten Schröder, Charlotte Bartels, Klaudia Erhardt, Alexandra Fedorets, Andreas Franken, Marco Giesselmann, Markus Grabka, Peter Krause, Hannes Kröger, Simon Kühne, Maria Metzing, Jana Nebelin, David Richter, Diana Schacht, Paul Schmelzer, Christian Schmitt, Daniel Schnitzlein, Rainer Siegers, Knut Wenzig
Data collector: Kantar Deutschland GmbH
Population: Persons living in private households in Germany.
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.)
Data set information:
Number of units | 120,381 |
Number of variables | 72,709 in 439 data sets |
Data format | STATA, SPSS, SAS, CSV |
MD5 fingerprints
Distribution format |
zip file |
all files |
Stata bilingual | 79f4c5076b249d8e16698f77eebb87a1 | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
Stata German | 0f433722e5b990dceee7b834ee7811ba | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
Stata English | aded671d5c5ef2270d2bb3371b900606 | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
SPSS German | cae5c153aa87fce4e1cfbcbf4fdf3757v | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
SPSS English | f22fd10d608d26394572b960ca562e9b | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
SAS German | bf58a149f703741bc9c037921fc39180 | | TXT, 21.53 KB |
SAS English | c4b57f9921a8d31f91aff656e47e2653 | | TXT, 21.53 KB |
CSV | d48fb404344476be3f21c8516060272a | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
GGKBOU | ||
GGKBOU English | ||
Teaching version | ||
Stata German | 31e17d165176b7f737ee8c590b1ce5fc | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
Stata English | 7987938078f2b1f6114bd176a801070a | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
SPSS German | 2a5bf6b3d7806110e9833876c9e7c853 | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
SPSS English | 33cde96691542e040976ffa1622d127d | | TXT, 19.29 KB |
SAS German | 80e46b7f6e1070ef7068edac369e6d56 | | TXT, 21.43 KB |
SAS English | efb0256ff56c97b081e0965b0160f474 | | TXT, 21.43 KB |
Publications:
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:
Individual (PAPI) 2016: Field-de Field-en Var-de Var-en
Household (PAPI) 2016: Field-de Field-en Var-de Var-en
Biography (PAPI) 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Catch-up Individual 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Youth (16-17-year-olds, A-L1) 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Early Youth (13-14-year-olds) 2016: Field-de
Pre-teen (11-12-year-olds) 2016: Field-de
Early Youth (13-14-year-olds) 2016: Var-de
Pre-teen (11-12-year-olds) 2016: Var-de
Early Youth (13-14-year-olds) 2016: Var-en
Pre-teen (11-12-year-olds) 2016: Var-en
Mother and Child (Newborns) 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Mother and Child (2-3-year-olds) 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Mother and Child (5-6-year-olds) 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Parents and Child (7-8-year-olds) 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Mother and Child (9-10-year-olds) 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Deceased Individual 2016: Field-de Var-de Var-en
Grip Strength 2016: Field-de
Please find all sample specific questionnaires of this year and all questionnaires of previous years on this site
1) Documentation on ISCED Generation Using the CAMCES Tool in the IAB-SOEP Migration Samples M1/M2
3) SOEP-Core – Documentation of Sample Sizes and Panel Attrition (1984 until 2016)
6) SOEP-Core v33.1 – Documentation of the Household-related Meta-dataset HPFAD
9) SOEP-Core v33.1 – Documentation of Person-related Status and Generated Variables in $PGEN
10) SOEP-Core v33.1 – Documentation of Household-related Status and Generated Variables in $HGEN
14) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIOPAREN: Biography Information for the Parents of SOEP-Respondents
16) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIOSIB: Information on Siblings in the SOEP
18) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIOAGE17: The Youth Questionnaire
19) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIOSOC: Retrospective Data on Youth and Socialization
20) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIOJOB: Detailed Information on First and Last Job
21) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIOEDU: Data on Educational Participation and Transitions
22) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIORESID: Variables on Occupancy and Second Residence
23) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIOBIRTH: A Data Set on the Birth Biography of Male and Female Respondents
24) SOEP-Core v33.1 – BIOTWIN: TWINS in the SOEP
25) SOEP-Core v33 – INTERVIEWER: Detailed Information on SOEP Interviewers
26) SOEP-Core v33.1 – LIFESPELL: Information on the Pre- and Post-Survey History of SOEP-Respondents
27) SOEP-Core v33.1 – MIGSPELL and REFUGSPELL: The Migration-Biographies of Samples M1/M2 and M3/M4
28) SOEP-Core v33.1 – Activity Biography in the Files PBIOSPE and ARTKALEN
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