Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Paternal Part-Time Employment and Fathers' Long-Term Involvement in Child Care and Housework

Abstract Objective This study examines whether paternal part-time employment is related to greater involvement by fathers in child care and housework, both while fathers are working part-time and after they return to full-time employment. Background The study draws on four strands of theory—time availability, bargaining, gender ideology, and gender construction. It studies couples' division of ...

Essays in Empirical Health Economics (Dissertation)

Fear of Unemployment and its Effect on the Mental Health of Spouses

Unemployment has been shown to have adverse effects on different aspects of a person's life, and even the fear of losing a job affects individuals negatively. In addition, not only the individuals directly affected but also their spouses and other family members might be affected. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel, this study analyzes the relationship between individual job worries ...

How Health Plan Enrollees Value Prices Relative to Supplemental Benefits and Service Quality

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary benefit provision on top of federally mandated benefits, and (iii) health plan prices for almost all German health ...

The Role of Prices Relative to Supplemental Benefits and Service Quality in Health Plan Choice

This article links representative enrollee panel data to health plan data on (1) prices, (2) service quality, and (3) nonessential benefits for the German statutory multipayer market and the years 2007–2010. We first show that although heavy federal regulation ensures a simple choice architecture, the majority of health plans are dominated—even when considering four nonprice attributes. Enrollees in ...

Who Opts Out of the Statutory Health Insurance? A Discrete Time Hazard Model for Germany

The coexistence of social health insurance and private health insurance in Germany is subject to intense public debate. As only few have the opportunity to choose between the two systems, they are often regarded as privileged by the health insurance system. Applying a hazard model in discrete time, this paper examines the role of incentives set by the regulatory framework as well as the influence of ...

Minimum wage not yet for everyone: on the compensation of eligible workers before and after the minimum wage reform from the perspective of employees

Calculations based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) show that after the introduction of a statutory minimum wage in Germany in January 2015, the wage growth of eligible employees with low wages accelerated significantly. Before the reform, the nominal growth in contractual hourly wages in the lowest decile, the bottom tenth of the pay distribution, was less than two percent in the long-term ...

Risk attitude and wage growth: replicating Shaw (1996)

We replicate Shaw (J Labor Econ 14(4):626–653, 1996) who found that individual wage growth is higher for individuals with greater preference for risk taking. Expanding her dataset with more American observations and data for Germany, Spain, and Italy, we find evidence that risk attitudes are relevant but support is mixed at best for the original specifications.

Income comparisons and non-cognitive skills

People gain utility from occupying a higher ranked position in the income distribution of the reference group. This paper investigates whether these gains depend on an individual’s set of non-cognitive skills. Using the 2000-2008 waves of the German Socioeconomic Panel dataset (SOEP), a subjective question on Life Satisfaction, and three different sets of non-cognitive skills indicators, we find significant ...

Life Satisfaction, Income Comparisons and Individual Traits

People gain utility from occupying a higher ranked position in the income distribution of the reference group. This paper investigates whether these gains depend on an individual's set of personality and affective traits. Using the 2000 to 2013 waves of the German Socio‐economic Panel dataset (SOEP), a subjective question on Life Satisfaction, and three different measures of personal and affective ...