Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Social Participation over the Life Course: A Longitudinal Study of Work and Family Events

Social participation is a dynamic process that changes over the life course, while people fill different social roles as they age. Previous studies on social participation have looked at differences between age groups, but the great majority is based on cross-sectional data, with the inevitable limitations that go along with that. The first objective of this study is to provide a descriptive account ...

Report on quality of income data

A penalized spline estimator for fixed effects panel data models

Estimating nonlinear effects of continuous covariates by penalized splines is well established for regressions with cross-sectional data as well as for panel data regressions with random effects. Penalized splines are particularly advantageous since they enable both the estimation of unknown nonlinear covariate effects and inferential statements about these effects. The latter are based, for example, ...

SOEP Wave Report 2012

2012 was an eventful year for the SOEP: The survey Families in Germany (FiD) released data collected for an overall assessment of German family policy measures for use outside the project. The SOEP Innovation Sample was expanded to almost 2,500 households. And, at the 10th SOEP User Conference, more than 80 scholars from around the world presented new research on income, education, health, and happiness. ...

Weighting Factors and Sampling Variance in Household Panels

Design-oriented Weighting of a Household Panel

The Effect of Panel Attrition on the Variance of Population Estimates from Household Panels

The effects of the first birth timing on women's wages: A longitudinal analysis based on the German Socio-Economic Panel

While the wage effects of a birth, the so-called “motherhood wage gap”, have already been analyzed in more detail, studies exploring the timing of this life event still tend to be rare. Moreover, the large majority of existing evidence on this topic is based on data from the United States. Research using other data sources, for example research based on German data, is almost completely missing. By ...

Continuous and Transitory. Part-Time Work in West Germany

Marriage, adaptation and happiness: Are there long-lasting gains to marriage?

This paper uses 23 waves of German panel data and investigates if individuals who decide to marry become permanently happier. Following the same persons over several years we show that they do, thereby challenging a number of recent longitudinal studies in psychology and economics which suggest that individuals fully adapt to the positive impact of marriage. Further, we compare different empirical ...