Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Mutual Influences of Health and Poverty. Evidence from German Panel Data

Noncognitive Skills in Economics: Models, Measurement and Empirical Evidence

There is an increasing economic literature considering personality. This paper provides an overview on the role of these skills regarding three main aspects of economic analysis: measurement, theoretical modeling, and empirical estimates. Based on the relevant literature from different disciplines, the common psychometric measures used to assess personality are discussed. A recently proposed theoretical ...

Individual Poverty Paths and the Stability of Control-Perception

This paper investigates whether individual control-perception affects the probability of becoming poor, and vice versa, whether poverty experiences can be detrimental to these traits later on. The former relation is intuitive as control related traits underlay many idiosyncratic determinants of poverty. Though traits like control-perception are known to stabilize towards adulthood, the latter association ...

Illness and Health Satisfaction: The Role of Relative Comparisons

This paper investigates the role of relative comparisons in health status for individual health satisfaction. Previous research stresses the importance of interdependencies in subjective well-being and health arising from positional preferences and status effects, social health norms, and comparison processes. Using representative longitudinal data from a German population survey, we estimate empirical ...

Leave the Drama on the Stage: The Effect of Cultural Participation on Health

The aim of this study is to estimate the causal effect of cultural participation on health status. Cultural activities may directly impact upon health through palliative coping or substituting health-compromising behaviors. Cultural engagement may also facilitate the development of social networks, which can improve health via social support and the dissemination of social health norms. Previous estimates ...

Caring Alone? Social Capital and the Mental Health of Caregivers

This study analyzes the role of social capital in buffering the negative relationship between informal-care provision and mental health. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and fixed-effect regression models, we show that those individuals who socialize more frequently enjoy better mental health. We also find that stronger social ties moderate the negative association between caregiving ...

The Social Context of Health (Dissertation)

This thesis presents three empirical essays on the wider social determinants of health status. It analyzes the relevance of cultural, social and psychological determinants of health and their implications for health policy in Germany. These factors reflect the dependence of health status and subjective health assessment on the individual’s social environment. The empirical analyses rely on large-scale ...

A life-span perspective on life satisfaction

The German population is ageing due to decreasing birth rates and increasing life expectancy. To sustain the German pension system, legal retirement age is increased step by step to 67 years. This raises questions about how to enable and motivate older individuals to work that long. Hence, it is important to understand whether they represent a homogeneous group that can be addressed through specific ...

Reluctant to Reform? A Note on Risk-Loving Politicians and Bureaucrats

As from a political economy perspective, politicians often fail to implement structural reforms, we investigate if the resistance to reform is based on the differences in the risk preferences of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. Based on the empirical results of a survey of the population in Germany, 175 members of the Federal German Parliament (Bundestag), and 106 officials (“bureaucrats”) from ...

Reluctant to Reform? A Note on Risk-Loving Politicians and Bureaucrats

From a political economy perspective, politicians often fail to implement structural reforms. In this contribution we investigate if the resistance to reform is based on the differences in the risk preferences of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. Based on three surveys among the German electorate, 175 members of the Federal German Parliament and 106 officials from German ministries, this is not ...