Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Employment of Domestic Help and Women's Labor Force Participation in Western Germany

Regional Social Contexts and Fertility in Western Germany: A Multilevel Approach (Dissertation)

The Geographic Context of Male Nuptiality in Western Germany During the 1980s and 1990s

This paper studies the relationship between characteristics of men’s place of residence and the probability of entering marriage in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. We link micro-information from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) with district-level data to estimate discrete-time multilevel logit models. Our results support the widely accepted idea about the importance of men’s ...

Regional Social Contexts and Individual Fertility Decisions: A Multilevel Analysis of First and Second Births in Western Germany

The Differential Influence of Women's Residential District on the Risk of Entering First Marriage and Motherhood in Western Germany

This paper investigates the role of women's residential district in the process of family formation in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. Our analysis of the transition to first marriage and motherhood is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), which we merge with a rich set of district-level data. The estimated multilevel discrete-time logit models suggest that (1) basically ...

Effects of Early Life Family Events on Women's Late Life Labour Market Behaviour: An Analysis of the Relationship between Childbearing and Retirement in Western Germany

The relationship between a woman's reproductive history and her entry into retirement is not well-investigated yet. Will mothers exit the workforce earlier than childless women (as they have a weaker labour market orientation; as they are more likely to have a ‘male breadwinner’ in the household), or will they work longer to make-up for employment interruptions during their reproductive phase? ...

Childbearing history, later-life health, and mortality in Germany

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigated the role of childbearing history in later life health and mortality, paying particular attention to possible differences by sex and region. Higher parity is associated with better self-rated health in Western German mothers and fathers aged 50+, but its relationship with Eastern German women’s physical health and survival is negative. ...

Flexible Pension Systems - Postponed Retirement and Distributional Fairness

This paper studies how both pension systems and well-being at work can be improved to postpone retirement in European households. The analysis draws on the first 8 waves (1994-2001) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Option values for retirement are constructed from a pool of four countries: Finland, Belgium, Germany and Spain, all relying on public-sector mandated pensions. The pooled ...

Introducing Risk Adjustment and Free Health Plan Choice in Employer-Based Health Insurance: Evidence from Germany

To equalize differences in health plan premiums due to differences in risk pools, the German legislature introduced a simple Risk Adjustment Scheme (RAS) based on age, gender and disability status in 1994. In addition, effective 1996, consumers gained the freedom to choose among hundreds of existing health plans, across employers and state-borders. This paper (a) estimates RAS pass-through rates on ...

Intergenerational Effects of Economic Distress: Paternal Unemployment and Child Secondary Schooling Decisions

Economic crises are particularly detrimental if they affect next-generation human capital. This paper investigates how paternal unemployment affects children’s educational attainment, using variation in the local unemployment rate to identify the unemployment effect. To this end, I match German representative household data with labor market information on 97 regions for the years 1998-2009. Paternal ...