Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Normative Judgments Implicit in the Tax System: A Simulation Approach

How much does society value redistribution? The common method to derive inverse-optimum welfare weights is by inverting an optimal-tax model. Our alternative imposes fewer restrictions on labor supply and enables comparisons across household types. We use a structural labor supply model to calculate the marginal value of public funds for various small tax reductions, directly linked to welfare weights. ...

Do local public expenditures on sports facilities affect sports participation in Germany?

This paper analyzes the effect of local public expenditures on sports facilities on sports participation in Germany. To this end, we construct a new database containing public expenditures at the municipality level and link this information with individual level data. We form locally weighted averages of expenditures based on geographic distances since people also benefit from expenditures of neighboring ...

Status anxiety and quality of life: How much does inequality hurt?

Differences Between Lifelong Singles and Ever-Partnered Individuals in Big Five Personality Traits and Life Satisfaction

Being romantically partnered is widely seen as a societal norm, and it has been shown to be positively associated with important life outcomes, such as physical and mental health. However, the percentage of singles is steadily increasing, with more people staying single for life. We used the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE; N = 77,064, mainly ≥ 50 years, 27 countries) to investigate ...

Social origins and educational attainment: The unique contributions of parental education, class, and financial resources over time

This study examines the unique contributions of parental wealth, class background, education, and income to different measures of educational attainment. We build on recent sibling correlation approaches to estimate, using Norwegian register data, the gross and net contribution of each social origin dimension across almost 3 decades of birth cohorts. Our findings suggest that parental education is ...

Under blood pressure – differentiated versus undifferentiated marketing to increase blood donations

Despite strong evidence in current marketing theory and practice that a differentiated marketing approach increases recruitment success, blood services worldwide often use undifferentiated marketing strategies to address new blood donors. Relying on the assumption that differentiated marketing is highly promising; the authors developed an online experiment among 838 participants who had not donated ...

Zooming into the first year after parental death: Loss and recovery in adult mental health

The initial year after parental death is a critical period for grief and coping. Despite its significance for declines in and recovery of adult mental health, this initial period is not sufficiently captured in existing research following changes across annual or even broader intervals. This paper assesses the impact of the first and second parent’s death on adult mental health on more fine-grained ...

Investigation of dog ownership and physical activity on weekdays and weekends using longitudinal data from the SOEP Cohort

This study examines the association between dog ownership over a period of 5 years (always, sometimes and no ownership) with physical activity on weekdays and weekends over a period of 6 years using the nationally representative German Socio-Economic Panel. Participants were asked if they had any pets and how many hours they spend on sports, fitness, and exercise. We hypothesized that the length of ...

Empirical Essays on Inequality (Dissertation)

This dissertation consists of four empirical chapters which contribute to the fields of labor economics and inequality research. The first chapter examine whether gender differences exist in fairness evaluation of own earnings. Previous studies found that women tend to evaluate their own pay more favorably than men. Contented women are speculated to not seek higher wages, thus the ‘paradox of the contented ...

The impact of Communist Party membership on wealth distribution and accumulation in urban China

This paper provides the first in-depth investigation into the evolution of the wealth gap between CCP and non-CCP households in urban China from 1995 to 2017. We apply unconditional quantile regression to analyze the variations in the premiums of party membership across the wealth distribution. Our results show that although the average wealth gap between CCP and non-CCP households remained substantial ...