Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Wind of Change? Cultural Determinants of Maternal Labor Supply

Does the culture in which a woman grows up influence her labor market decisions once she has had a child? And to what extent can exposure to a different cultural group in adulthood shape maternal labor supply? To address these questions, we exploit the setting of the German reunification. A state socialist country, East Germany strongly encouraged mothers to participate in the labor market full-time, ...

Social Norms and the Labour Market Integration of Women: Three Lessons Learnt from German Women since World War II

In light of persistent gender inequality on the labour market, I investigate how social norms affect women’s labour market integration along two dimensions: through reduced labour supply upon the arrival of children and through constraints on geographic mobility. I first look at the persistence and change of gender norms around the time of childbirth. To that end, I explore the setting of the German ...

Are Retirees More Satisfied? Anticipation and Adaptation Effects: A Causal Panel Analysis of German Statutory Insured and Civil Service Pensioners

This study contributes to the subjective well-being and retirement literature by quantifying life satisfaction before (4) and after retirement (9+) periods asking: Are retirees more satisfied? Fixed-effects and causal instrumental variables (IV) estimates with individual longitudinal data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, 33 waves) analyze anticipation and adaptation retirement effects of statutory ...

Physical Intimacy in Older Couples’ Everyday Lives: Its Frequency and Links With Affect and Salivary Cortisol

Objectives: Physical intimacy is important for communicating affection in romantic relationships. Theoretical and empirical work highlights linkages between physical intimacy, affect, and physiological stress among young and middle-aged adults, but not older adults. We examine physical intimacy and its associations with positive and negative affect and cortisol levels in the daily lives of older couples. ...

No Evidence That Siblings' Gender Affects Personality across Nine Countries

Does growing up with a sister rather than a brother affect personality? In this article, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of siblings’ gender on adults’ personality, using data from 85,887 people from 12 large representative surveys covering nine countries (United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China, and Indonesia). We investigated ...

Information Frictions among Firms and Households

We survey samples of German firms and households to document novel stylized facts about the extent of information frictions among the two groups. First, firms' expectations about macroeconomic variables are closer to expert forecasts and less dispersed than households', consistent with higher information frictions among households. Second, the degree of dispersion and the distance from expert ...

Managers' Risk Preferences and Firm Training Investments

We provide the first estimates of the impact of managers' risk preferences on their training allocation decisions. Our conceptual framework links managers' risk preferences to firms' training decisions through the bonuses they expect to receive. Risk-averse managers are expected to select workers with low turnover risk and invest in specific rather than general training. Empirical evidence ...

Myths and Facts About Inequality

Which Decision Theory Describes Life Satisfaction Best? Evidence from Annual Panel Data

We use an annual household panel to test which features of prospect theory can be supported by measures of life satisfaction. We also test whether recalled or expected life satisfaction is anchored at current life satisfaction and adjusted in the direction of the recall or expectation. Using a fixed effects estimator we find that life satisfaction contains features of both classic expected utility ...

Impact of Inequality-Related Media Coverage on the Concerns of the Citizens

Income distribution and inequality play a central role in the public and political debate in many developed and democratic countries. An increasing literature on (mis)perception of the distribution of income reveals that people have very little knowledge about the degree of inequality in the society and its development over time. The jury is still out on what actually drives the perception of inequality ...