Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Relationship between Inequality and GDP Growth: an Empirical Approach

The aim of this work is to analyze the relationship between inequality and economic growth. The results obtained by previous empirical papers were mixed. Authors such as Persson and Tabellini (1991) or Alesina and Rodrik (1994), in fact, find evidence of a negative relationship between the two variables of interest; on the contrary, Li and Zou (1998) and Forbes (2000) find that greater inequality is ...

The bonus share of flexible pay in Germany, Japan and the US: Some empirical regularities

Effect of Changes in Living Conditions on Well-Being: A Prospective Top–Down Bottom–Up Model

Using the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examined life-satisfaction and housing satisfaction before and after moving (N = 3,658 participants from 2,162 households) with univariate and bivariate two-intercept two-slope latent growth models. The main findings were (a) a strong and persistent increase in average levels of housing satisfaction, (b) no increase in average life-satisfaction, (c) low stability ...

Analyzing 21st Century Video Data on Situational Dynamics: Issues and Challenges in Video Data Analysis

Since the turn of the millennium researchers have access to an ever-increasing pool of novel types of video recordings. People use camcorders, mobile phone cameras, and even drones to film and photograph social life, and many public spaces are under video surveillance. More and more sociologists, psychologists, education researchers, and criminologists rely on such visuals to observe and analyze social ...

Video Data Analysis: A Methodological Frame for a Novel Research Trend

Since the early 2000s, the proliferation of cameras, whether in mobile phones or CCTV, led to a sharp increase in visual recordings of human behavior. This vast pool of data enables new approaches to analyzing situational dynamics. Application is both qualitative and quantitative and ranges widely in fields such as sociology, psychology, criminology, and education. Despite the potential and numerous ...

Intergenerational Relationships

Intergenerational relationships within family and kinship structures have become a salient issue in scientific research. The major reasons for this are the intense demographic changes that occurred throughout the twentieth century, such as an increased life expectancy in combination with decreased fertility, and the implications of this for the major institutions of the social welfare state. This has ...

Technological Innovation and Inclusive Growth in Germany

Technological innovation has historically contributed to inclusive economic growth in Germany. In more recent decades, however, this contribution has weakened due to the declining impact of technological innovation on labor productivity growth. Fearing that this declining impact would undermine the international competitiveness of the economy, real labor compensation was progressively curbed since ...

The Effect of Leisure Activities on Life Satisfaction: The Importance of Holiday Trips

Does active leisure make life more satisfying? If so, what kind of leisure activity is the greatest contributor to happiness? These questions are answered by means of data from four waves of a large-scale continuous study of the general public in Germany. Cross-sectional analysis does not show much of a relationship between happiness and last year’s leisure activities, with the exception of holiday ...

Intergenerational Transmission of Risk Attitudes − A Revealed Preference Approach

This study investigates whether children and parents show a similar willingness to take risk in their choice of occupation. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we calculate the occupational variation in earnings unexplained by human capital differences to obtain a measure of occupational risk. We find that fathers' earnings risk is significantly positively related to sons' earnings ...

Politics and parents - Intergenerational transmission of values after a regime shift

Exploiting the "natural experiment" of German reunification, we study whether socialism has an enduring effect on people's basic values. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we show that individuals that lived in the German Democratic Republic assign different importance to six out of nine values. The first subsequent generation differs in a similar way from their West German ...