Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

An Unconditional Basic Income in the Family Context – Labor Supply and Distributional Effects

In this paper we estimate the effects of an unconditional basic income on labor supply and income distribution with a special focus on the incentives to work in the family context. An unconditional basic income guarantees every citizen a minimum income without any means-testing. We simulate a proposed basic income reform with a detailed microsimulation model, estimate labor supply reactions with a ...

The Health Gradient and Early Retirement: Evidence from the German Socio-economic Panel

The Social Costs of Health-related Early Retirement in Gernany: Evidence from the German Socio-economic Panel

This study investigates the role of stratification of health and income in the social cost of health-related early retirement, as evidenced in the German Socio-economic Panel (GSOEP). We interpret early retirement as a mechanism to limit work-related declines in health that allows poorer and less healthy workers to maximize the total discounted value of annuities received from Germany’s pay-as-you-go ...

Endangering of Businesses by the German Inheritance Tax? – An Empirical Analysis

This contribution addresses the substantial tax privilege for businesses introduced by the German Inheritance Tax Act 2009. Advocates of the vast or even entire tax exemption for businesses stress the potential damage of the inheritance tax on businesses, as those often lack liquidity to meet tax liability. This submission tackles this issue empirically based on data of the German Inheritance Tax Statistics ...

Income Mobility in the United States and Germany: A Comparison of Two Classes of Mobilty Measures using the GSOEP, PSID, and CPS

The United States is often considered to be more free-wheeling and mobile than Germany; however, previous cross-national studies of income mobility find the opposite is true. This paper investigates these surprising results and finds that they are confirmed when income mobility is measured by changes in the positions of individuals in the income distribution — members of former West German households ...

Neighbourhood effects in cross-Atlantic perspective: A longitudinal analysis of impacts on intergenerational mobility in the USA and Germany

Research in the USA provides evidence that neighbourhood conditions affect intergenerational mobility. However, what remains unclear is the extent to which the US context is unique in producing this influence. To examine this question, the present study directly compares neighbourhood effects on intergenerational mobility in the USA versus those in Germany – a country whose housing market and social ...

The effect of a ban on gender-based pricing on risk selection in the German health insurance market

Starting from December 2012, insurers in the European Union were prohibited from charging gender-discriminatory prices. We examine the effect of this unisex mandate on risk segmentation in the German health insurance market. While gender used to be a pricing factor in Germany’s private health insurance (PHI) sector, it was never used as a pricing factor in the social health insurance (SHI) sector. ...

Design-features of bubble-prone experimental asset markets with a constant FV

Experimental asset markets with a constant fundamental value ($$\mathrm {\textsc {fv}}$$FV) have grown in importance in recent years. A methodological examination of the robustness of experimental results in such a setting which has been shown to produce bubbles, however, is lacking. In a laboratory experiment with 280 subjects, we investigate whether specific design features are sufficient to influence ...

The Welfare State and Gender Equality

Changes in parental leave and young children’s non-cognitive skills

This study examines the effect of substantial changes in parental leave regulations on the non-cognitive development of children aged between 0 and 3 years. I exploit a large and unanticipated parental leave reform in Germany as a natural experiment. Since the first of January 2007, the replacement of a means-tested by an earnings-related system led to a gain in benefits for wealthier families whereas ...