Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Access to urban green space and environmental inequalities in Germany

Although sufficient and equitable access to urban green represents a key aspect for adequate living conditions and a healthy environment in urban areas, national studies investigating the provision of urban green on household and individual level are scarce. We present a study investigating access to urban green space and environmental inequalities in German major cities by merging geo-coded household ...

Accessibility of urban blue in German major cities

Action 5 of the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy explicitly mentions that EU member states, with assistance of the Commission, will map and assess the state of ecosystems and ecosystem services in their national territory by 2014. Water represents an important landscape element and contributes to human health and well-being in urban areas. However, in Germany – like in many other European countries – ...

Sample selection models for count data in R

We provide a detailed hands-on tutorial for the R package SemiParSampleSel (version 1.5). The package implements selection models for count responses fitted by penalized maximum likelihood estimation. The approach can deal with non-random sample selection, flexible covariate effects, heterogeneous selection mechanisms and varying distributional parameters. We provide an overview of the theoretical ...

Trade-Off Between Consumption Growth and Inequality: Theory and Evidence for Germany

This paper examines the structure and evolution of consumption inequality. Once heterogeneous agents relate their neighbors' consumption to their own, consumption volatility and inequality are affected. The model predicts a positive relationship between the group specific average consumption growth and within-group inequality, which is empirically confirmed using survey data from the German Socio-Economic ...

Consumption Growth and Inequality in a Heterogeneous Agent Model: Theory and Evidence from German Data

This paper studies the structure and dynamics of consumption and consumption growth inequality. The theoretical framework is a heterogeneous agent model with stochastic labor endowments, where the group mean consumption serves as consumption externality. The main finding is that households' preferences affect the within-group inequality through asset holding decisions: it decreases with groups' ...

Take Me “Home”: Determinants of Return Migration Among Germany’s Elderly Immigrants

This paper examines the determinants of return migration as foreign-born individuals approach old age in Germany. Return migration in later life engages a different set of conditions than return migration earlier on, including framing return as a possible retirement strategy. Using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel, results suggest that later-life emigrants are “negatively selected” on the basis ...

Getting Older, Getting Poorer? A Study of the Earnings, Pensions, Assets and Living Arrangements of Older People in Nine Countries

The impact of music on educational attainment

This paper analyzes the impact of music practice on educational outcomes. Estimates from multivariate regressions and individual fixed effects suggest that childhood musical activity—either playing an instrument or singing—relates positively to educational achievements in adolescence. The magnitude and significance of the estimated music coefficients for different music indicators is robust when increasing ...

A Natural Experiment on Sick Pay Cuts, Sickness Absence, and Labor Costs

This study estimates the reform effects of a reduction in statutory sick pay levels on various outcome dimensions. A federal law reduced the legal obligation of German employers to provide 100 percent continued wages for up to six weeks per sickness episode to 80 percent. This measure increased the ratio of employees having no days of absence by about 7.5 percent. The mean number of absence days per ...

The Effects of Expanding the Generosity of the Statutory Sickness Insurance System

This article evaluates an expansion of employer-mandated sick leave from 80% to 100% of forgone gross wages in Germany. We employ and compare parametric difference-in-difference (DID), matching DID and mixed approaches. Overall workplace absences increased by at least 10% or 1 day per worker per year. We show that taking partial compliance into account increases coefficient estimates. Further, heterogeneity ...