Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Inept or Badly Matched? — Effects of Educational Mismatch in the Labor Market

Negative wage effects of educational mismatch have become a stylized fact. Whether these are explained by differences in unobserved productivity or poor matching is still to be answered conclusively. In an empirical analysis based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the International Adult Literacy Survey, a broad econometric strategy is applied to solve the problem of unobserved heterogeneity ...

Dead Man Walking: The Impact of Over-Education on Life Satisfaction

The negative effects of unemployment on wellbeing have been clearly documented in the economics literature. However some current employees may move directly into a new job, never experiencing an unemployment spell, yet find themsleves in a new job underutilising their skills or education ("downchanges"). We assess empirically, whether downchanges are similar to unemployment spells, in that ...

Determinants of institutionalization in old age

Different Contexts, Different Effects? Work Time and Mental Health in the United States and Germany

This paper takes a comparative approach to the topic of work time and health, asking whether weekly work hours matter for mental health. We hypothesize that these relationships differ within the United States and Germany, given the more regulated work time environments within Germany and the greater incentives to work long hours in the United States. We further hypothesize that German women will experience ...

Data in the Field of Adult Education and Lifelong Learning: Present Situation, Improvements and Challenges

Over the last years, political and scientific debates have stressed the growing importance of adult education. Currently important research questions call not only for data sources that collect detailed information on adult education with repeated measurements and in different cohorts, but they should also include data on other life spheres such as education and working histories, partnership and household ...

Institutions, parental selection, and locus of control

Locus of control, that is, people's perception of how much influence they have over their lives, is an important predictor for economic outcomes - earnings, health and education, to name a few. This article uses difference-in-differences analysis to investigate the importance of the institutional environment for the development of locus of control, using the fall of the Berlin Wall as exogenous ...

You don't know what you've got till it's gone! Unemployment and intertemporal changes in self-reported life satisfaction

This paper uses concurrently and - for the first time - retrospectively reported life satisfaction from the 1984 to 1987 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel to study the importance of different comparison standards for the empirical correlation of unemployment and subjective life satisfaction. It is found that unemployed individuals do not only report significantly lower concurrent satisfaction, ...

Does composition matter? Wage inequality and the demographic and educational structure of the labor force in Germany

This paper addresses the importance of compositional changes in the labor force for the development of the wage distribution. Demographic change and higher educational attainment imply a shift toward employees with more experience and/or better education. These groups are characterized by higher relative wages as well as higher within-group wage inequality. Mechanically, these compositional shifts ...

Does Parental Unemployment Affect the Quality of their Children’s First Job?

In this paper the relationship between parental unemployment at time of children's labor market entrance on the quality of their children's first job is analyzed. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1991-2012 the quality of the first job in terms of wage, permanent position and full-time employment is examined. The results show a negative correlation between ...

Does moving for family nest-building inhibit mothers' labour force (re-)entry?

BACKGROUND: Couples tend to move house around first childbirth and often into suburban or rural neighbourhoods, conforming to the normative belief that children should grow up in a ‘proper family home.’ Such moves are likely to increase housing costs and both partners might need to contribute to the household income. But the move might also necessitate long commutes, inhibiting mothers’ labour force ...