Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Flexible Modelling of Duration of Unemployment Using Functional Hazard Models and Penalized Splines: A Case Study Comparing Germany and the UK

The intention of this paper is to demonstrate the flexibility and capacity of penalized spline smoothing as estimation routine for modelling duration time data. We investigate the unemployment behaviour in Germany and the UK between 1995 and 2005 based on data from national panel studies. Functional duration time models are used to investigate the dynamics of covariate effects. The focus of our analysis ...

Poverty Is a Public Bad: Panel Evidence from Subjective Well-Being Data

Previous research has found that subjective well-being (SWB) is lower for individuals classified as being in poverty. We extend the poverty-SWB literature by focusing on aggregate poverty. Using panel data for 39,239 individuals living in Germany from 2005–2013, we show that people's SWB is negatively correlated with the regional (state-level) poverty ratio while controlling for individual poverty ...

Income Comparison, Income Formation, and Subjective Well-Being: New Evidence on Envy versus Signaling

Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses panel data on subjective well-being from Germany over the period 1991–2009 to study whether the nature of income comparison has changed in the process of economic development and institutional change. We conceptualize a person's comparison income as the income predicted by indicators of her productivity ...

Participation in Continuing Vocational Training in Germany between 1989 and 2008

Who participates in continuing vocational training and who does not? This central question in research on continuing vocational training gains in significance the more the importance of lifelong learning is postulated. On the basis of the SOEP data collection periods of 1989, 1993, 2000, 2004 and 2008, I will describe participation in continuing vocational training in Germany between 1989 and 2008, ...

Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in Germany: Moving with Natives or Stuck in their Neighbourhoods

In this paper, I analyze intergenerational mobility of immigrants and natives in Germany. Using the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP), I find intergenerational elasticities that range from 0.19 to 0.26 for natives and from 0.37 to 0.40 for immigrants. These elasticity estimates are lower than typically found for the U.S. and imply higher mobility in Germany than in the U.S. However, as in the U.S., ...

Are All Single Mothers the Same? Evidence from British and West German Women’s Employment Trajectories

Single motherhood is often discussed as a reason for women’s non-employment. This article investigates women’s employment trajectories during and after single motherhood in the welfare state contexts of Britain and West Germany. Sequence analysis is applied to longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (N¼329) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (N¼378), comparing patterns in employment ...

Understanding Differences in Labour Market Attachment of Single Mothers in Great Britain and West Germany

This paper investigates the relationships between single mothers’ demographic and socio-economic circumstances and differences in their labour market attachment in Great Britain and West Germany. Single mothers’ employment is a key issue in current policy debates in both countries, as well as in research on the major challenges of contemporary welfare states. The heterogeneity of the group of women ...

Count Data Models. Econometric Theory and an Application to Labor Mobility (Lecture Notes in Econometrics and Mathematical Systems 410; Dissertation)

Another Look at Work Contracts and Absenteeism

A count data model for gamma waiting times

A new distribution for non-negative integers, or counts, is developed. It is based on the assumption that the waiting times separating consecutive events are independently and identically gamma distributed. Thus, the structural process generating the counts may exhibit duration dependence. In this framework, the frequently observed phenomenon of overdispersion, that is a variance that exceeds the mean, ...