Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The effect of unemployment on the mental health of spouses – Evidence from plant closures in Germany

Studies on health effects of unemployment usually neglect spillover effects on spouses. This study specifically investigates the effect of an individual's unemployment on the mental health of their spouse. In order to allow for causal interpretation of the estimates, it focuses on plant closure as entry into unemployment, and combines difference-in-difference and matching based on entropy balancing ...

Four Essays on Causal Inference in Health Economics (Dissertation)

Does job loss make you smoke and gain weight?

This paper estimates the effect of involuntary job loss on smoking behaviour and body weight using German SOEP data. Baseline non-smokers are more likely to start smoking due to job loss, while smokers do not intensify smoking. In particular, single individuals and those with lower health or socioeconomic status prior to job loss exhibit high rates of smoking initiation. Job loss increases body weight ...

Maternal labour supply and all-day primary schools in Germany

The economic literature provides vast evidence of how public provision of day care for children below school age increases the labour force participation of mothers. The causal effect of all-day schooling in primary school on maternal supply has been examined less since morning-only schooling is less common in developed countries. The present article summarises the findings of (mostly) economic studies ...

Weighting adjustments in the presence of non-coverage due to residential mobility in the German Microcensus-Panel

Beyond the Employment Agency: The Effect of Social Capital on the Duration of Unemployment

This paper relates an individual’s social capital and the length of unemployment spells of the very same individual. For this purpose, we analyze several facets of an agent’s social activities as determinants of her social capital. Social activities lead to social interactions within organizational settings, which build up social capital at the group level. Via social interactions an exchange of knowledge ...

Does Education Affect Attitudes Towards Immigration? Evidence from Germany

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and exploiting the staggered implementation of a compulsory schooling reform in West Germany, this article finds that an additional year of schooling lowers the probability of being very concerned about immigration to Germany by around six percentage points (20 percent). Furthermore, our findings imply significant spillovers from maternal education to ...

Early Career Experiences and Later Career Success: An International Comparison

Early Career Experiences and Later Career Outcomes: Comparing the United States, France, and Germany

This paper explores the links between individuals' early career experiences and their labor market outcomes 5 to 20 years later using data from France, (western) Germany, and the United States. Relative to most of the literature, we consider a large set of measures of men's early career experiences and later career outcomes. Our results differ significantly across countries. Labor market ...

Children’s Sex and the Happiness of Parents

Demographers are interested in sex preferences for children because they can skew sex ratios and influence population-level fertility, parenting behavior, and family outcomes. Based on parity progression ratios, in most European countries, there are no sex preferences for a first child, but a strong preference for mixed-sex children. We hypothesize that mixed-sex preferences also influence parental ...