Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Personality and Cultural Income Differences Shape the Life Satisfaction Gap Between Aging Immigrants and Natives in Europe

The present study examined the size and possible sources of life satisfaction differences between immigrants and natives in a sample of over 55,000 adults (aged 50+ years) across 16 European countries and Israel. Consistent with theory and prior research, immigrants reported lower life satisfaction than natives on average, while the size of the life satisfaction gap varied substantially across individuals ...

Polluted Job Search: The Impact of Poor Air Quality on Reservation Wages

This paper investigates the impact of air pollution on reservation wages. We use rich survey data on unemployed job seekers in Germany and exploit variation in individual exposure to fine particulate matter (PM10) based on the quasi-random allocation of interview slots to individuals. Our results show that an increase in PM10 by one standard deviation (corresponding to 12 μg/m3) reduces the reservation ...

Understanding the public-private sector wage gap in Germany: New evidence from a Fixed Effects quantile Approach∗

The public-private sector wage gap is an important labor market indicator, reflecting sectoral differences in wage and recruitment policies. We provide new evidence on this sectoral gap throughout the wage distribution in Germany. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984–2017), we decompose the wage gap and control for unobservable factors that endogenously determine the occupational sector ...

Quantile regression estimands and models: revisiting the motherhood wage penalty debate

This paper discusses the crucial but sometimes neglected differences between unconditional quantile regression (UQR) models and quantile treatment effects (QTE) models. We argue that there is a frequent mismatch between the aim of the quantile regression analysis and the quantitative toolkit used in much of the applied literature, including the motherhood wage penalty literature. This mismatch may ...

Observability, Honesty, and the Social Image Costs of Lying

We study the role of social image in influencing lying behavior through a pre-registered within-subject experiment embedded in the 2020 wave of the German SocioEconomic Panel Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS). By exogenously manipulating the observability of lying across two tasks, we explore how individuals respond to increased image costs of lying. By exploiting the rich comprehensive socio-demographic ...

Utilisation of dental services by refugees in Germany: Results of the population-based RESPOND survey

Background: The utilisation of outpatient dental services is an important indicator for monitoring healthcare provision in Germany. In the general population, the 12-month prevalence of dental service utilization is 82.2 %. For refugees, this indicator has hardly been measured, although studies suggest an objectively high need for dental care. Methodology: As part of the population-based cross-sectional ...

The Long-term Effects of Inflation on Inflation Expectations

We study the long-term effects of inflation surges on inflation expectations. German households living in areas with higher local inflation during the hyperinflation of the 1920s expect higher inflation today. Our evidence points towards a transmission of inflation experiences from parents to children and through local institutions. Differential historical inflation also modulates the updating of expectations ...

Nonparametric regression with selectively missing covariates

We consider the problem of regression with selectively observed covariates in a nonparametric framework. Our approach relies on instrumental variables that explain variation in the latent covariates but have no direct effect on selection. The regression function of interest is shown to be a weighted version of observed conditional expectation where the weighting function is a fraction of selection ...

Correction for Breznau et al., Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty

Nearly 1.1 million people in Germany use food banks, single and separated parents in particular at an above-average frequency

Food banks are returning to the spotlight as their use increases due to the coronavirus pandemic and the influx of Ukrainian refugees to Germany. The current discussion is focused on whether the food banks can handle the increasing number of users as well as the financial and organizational challenges that come with them. Until now, however, no robust, empirical data on food bank use has been available. ...