Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Political Socialization: Growing Up in a Non-intact Family and Civic Disengagement

Over the last several decades, a large number of developed countries has not only witnessed a downturn in civic engagement, but has also seen the breakdown of traditional family structures. Despite these coinciding trends, Putnam argues in Bowling alone (2000) that none of the major observed declines in civic engagement can be accounted for by the decline in the traditional family. In this paper, we ...

Job satisfaction declines before retirement in Germany

Job satisfaction has been found to increase with age. However, we still have a very limited understanding of how job satisfaction changes as people approach retirement. This is important as the years before retirement present specific challenges for older workers. We employed a time-to-retirement approach to investigate (i) mean levels of change in job satisfaction in the decade before retirement, ...

Economies of Scale for Household Wealth: An Analysis of Equivalence Scales

Measures of private wealth often refer to households or tax-units, but how does household wealth relate to individual welfare? Analogous to household economies of scale for consumption, this paper offers a methodology and empirical results to account for household wealth scale effects. These scale effects vary depending on the purpose of savings: funding consumption versus holding wealth for motives ...

Transnational ties, endowment with capital, and health of immigrants in Germany: cross-sectional study

Aim: Maintaining transnational ties may be an indication of poor integration into the host society (according to classical ‘assimilation theory’) or may convey additional capital resources to immigrants (the ‘transmigrant’ view of migration). Consequences for health would be negative in the first and positive in the second scenario. We tested the hypotheses that (1) maintaining transnational ties may ...

Willingness to Care-Financial Incentives and Caregiving Decisions

As population aging will likely lead to an increasing number of people in need of care, the demand for informal care is expected to rise. In this context, it is often discussed whether financial incentives can motivate more individuals to assume caregiving responsibilities. We analyze the potential effect of financial incentives on the provision of informal care by estimating a structural model with ...

Loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from five European countries

We use quarterly panel data from the COME-HERE survey covering five European countries to analyse three facets of the experience of loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, in terms of prevalence, loneliness peaked in April 2020, followed by a U-shape pattern in the rest of 2020, and then remained relatively stable throughout 2021 and 2022. We then establish the individual determinants of loneliness ...

The Dynamics of Household Location Preferences in Germany

Inspired by the literature on social polarisation and residential segregation we draw on a probabilistic approach to pursue the evolution of household location preferences in West Germany. Using microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the period 1984-2020 we demonstrate that structural economic change was accompanied by an increasing preference for residence in compact housing close ...

Fostering Prosperity at the Local Scale: Outcomes of Urban Policy for Deprived Neighbourhoods in Germany

Traditional urban policy focuses mainly on redevelopment measures. Germany’s Social City programme incorporates urban regeneration with support to local communities in deprived neighbourhoods. We use microdata on household characteristics from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and microdata on housing prices from the RWI GEO-RED to assess the policy effects on household income and housing markets. ...

A Couple-Perspective on Fertility Outcomes: Do Relative Resources Matter for First and Second Births?

McDonald (2000) has suggested that socio-economic gender equity within couples is a crucial component in shaping women’s fertility decisions. Empirically, however, little is known about how couple dynamics are influencing fertility outcomes. This paper examines if gender equity, measured as relative levels of income, education, work hours, and occupational status, affects the transition to first and ...

What Factors Determine the Gender Gap in Labor Force Participation and Wages among Refugees in Germany? (Master Thesis)