Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Income loss after a cancer diagnosis in Germany: An analysis based on the socio-economic panel survey

Background and Aims: Cancer treatments often require intensive use of healthcare services and limit patients’ ability to work, potentially causing them to become financially vulnerable. The present study is the first attempt to measure, on the German national level, the magnitude of absolute income loss after a cancer diagnosis. Methods: This study analyzes data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) ...

Dualisation versus targeting? Public transfers and poverty risks among the unemployed in Germany and Great Britain

The paper analyses changes in the generosity of public transfers to the unemployed and their effectiveness for the alleviation of poverty risks in Germany and Great Britain between the 1990s and the 2000s. In the light of changing poverty risks among the unemployed, the contribution of policy changes is assessed using individual-level data on household incomes. The results indicate that the introduction ...

Should Germany have built a new wall? Macroeconomic lessons from the 2015-18 refugee wave

In 2015–2016 Germany experienced a wave of predominantly low-skilled refugee immigration. We evaluate its macroeconomic and distributional effects using a quantitative overlapping generations model calibrated using German micro data to replicate education and productivity differentials between foreign born and native workers. Workers are modelled as imperfect substitutes in aggregate production leading ...

What Difference Does a Negative Opinion Climate Make? Assessing Immigrants’ Low-Wage Risks in Times of Heightened Anti-Immigrant Attitudes

Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass ein negatives Meinungsklima gegenüber Einwanderern das Niedriglohnrisiko von Einwanderern der zweiten Generation erhöht. Eine Matching-basierte Analyse von Daten aus 18 Wellen des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) liefert deutliche Indizien für diese Hypothese. Im Einklang mit existierenden Studien über die Löhne von Migranten zeigen die Ergebnisse, dass kontextuelle ...

Risky Moms, Risky Kids? Fertility and Crime after the Fall of the Wall

Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the birth rate halved in East Germany. Despite their small sizes, the cohorts conceived during this period of socio-economic turmoil were, as they grew up in reunified Germany, markedly more likely to be arrested than cohorts conceived a few years earlier. This is consistent with negative parental selection during the period of turmoil. We highlight risk attitude ...

Non-migrants’ and migrants’ interethnic relationships: the third party role of cohabiting partners

Considering both non-migrant and migrant couples, this paper studies the effect of cohabiting life partners’ attitudes, resources, and social network compositions on their spouse’s interethnic friendships and acquaintances. Thus, partners are conceptualized as important “third parties” for interethnic relationship formation. Analysing representative German household panel data, I find that partner ...

Is the problem mine, yours, or ours? The impact of unemployment on couples’ life satisfaction and specific domain satisfaction

Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, 1984-2017) and conducting fixed effects panel regressions, this study investigates the impact of unemployment on couples’ overall life satisfaction, as well as both partners’ satisfaction in specific life domains. Results confirm that job loss is harmful to both partners’ life satisfaction. In line with gender role models, the costs ...

Time to care? The effects of retirement on informal care provision

This paper analyzes the impact of women's retirement on their informal care provision. Using SOEP data, we address fundamental endogeneity problems by exploiting variation in the German pension system in two complementary ways. We find a significant effect of retirement on informal care provision, when using early retirement age thresholds as instruments. Heterogeneity analyses confirm the underlying ...

The Past, Present and Future of the German Record Linkage Center (GRLC)

Socio-Economic Family Background and Adult Children’s Health in Germany: The Role of Intergenerational Transmission of Education

This study examines consequences of parental education for adult children’s physical and mental health using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study. Based on random-effects growth curve models (N = 15,144 West German respondents born between 1925 and 1998 aged 18–80), we estimate gender-, age-, and cohort-specific trajectories of physical and mental health components of the SF-12 questionnaire ...