Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Successfully Striving for Happiness: Socially Engaged Pursuits Predict Increases in Life Satisfaction

Happiness is considered a highly desirable attribute, but whether or not individuals can actively steer their lives toward greater well-being is an open empirical question. In this study, respondents from a representative German sample reported, in text format, ideas for how they could improve their life satisfaction. We investigated which of these ideas predicted changes in life satisfaction 1 year ...

RZOO: Efficient Storage and Retrieval of Social Science Data

Changes in Job Stability: Evidence from Lifetime Job Histories

We use lifetime job histories from the pension records to evaluate changes in job stability in Finland between 1963 and 2004. We specify a duration model and estimate the effects of elapsed duration, age, and calendar time on the hazard of job ending using individual-level panel data spanning over four decades. We find that this hazard increased during the recession years in the early 1990s but has ...

Social influences on trajectories of self-rated health: evidence from Britain, Germany, Denmark and the United States

Background: We investigate social inequalities in self-rated health dynamics for working-aged adults in four nations, representing distinct welfare regime types. The aims are to: describe average national trajectories of self-rated health over a 7-year period; identify social determinants of cross-sectional and longitudinal health; and compare cross-national patterns. Methods: Data are from national ...

Residential Segregation and Socioeconomic Neighbourhood Sorting: Evidence at the Micro-neighbourhood Level for Migrant Groups in Germany

This paper assesses the residential segregation of German immigrants from Turkey, Italy, the Balkans and eastern Europe with a special focus on the link between social and ethnic segregation. Microdata from the German Socioeconomic Panel Study (SOEP) are used. A new dataset provided by the microm Micromarketing-Systeme und Consult GmbH makes accessible information on participants’ immediate residential ...

Income Inequality, Life Satisfaction, and Economic Worries

We analyzed the effect of income inequality on Germans’ life satisfaction considering factors explaining the mechanism of this relationship. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study for the years 1984 to 2012, we found a negative relationship between national-level income disparity and average life satisfaction, meaning that people felt happier in years with lower inequality. The effect ...

Where did all the unemployed go?: Non-standard work in Germany after the Hartz reforms

The number of unemployed workers in Germany decreased dramatically from its peak in February 2005 at over 5.2 million to 3.6 million by 2008. At the same time, employment increased by 1.2 million. Most theoretical and empirical analyses of this episode assume that a worker leaving unemployment moves into full employment. We ask where the unemployed actually went. Using and merging two large micro data ...

Fair financing in Germany's public health insurance: Income-related contributions or flat premiums?

The Capacity of Social Policies to Combat Poverty Among New Social Risk Groups

This paper considers groups who are most likely to be vulnerable to new social risks and tests the effects of social policies on their poverty levels. Specifically, the paper conducts multi-level regression analyses across 18 OECD countries near the year 2004, analyzing the effects of social policies on the likelihood of being poor of low-skilled young women and men aged 18-30, and of those at risk ...

Micro Income Change in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1984 and 1989