Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

COVID-19: A Crisis of the Female Self-Employed

We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic and the government-mandated measures to contain its spread affect the self-employed — particularly women — in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher ...

Heterogeneity in Marginal Returns to Language Training of Immigrants

Die Studie untersucht den Effekt von Sprachkursen auf Beschäftigung und Löhne von Immigranten. Die Identifikation basiert auf einer Instrument-Variable, die exogene Variation in der regionalen Verfügbarkeit von Sprachkursen nutzt. Anhand dieses Instruments werden marginale Treatment-Effekte (MTE) entlang der Verteilung beobachtbarer und unbeobachtbarer Variablen geschätzt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass ...

The macroeconomic effects of social security contributions and benefits

A narrative dataset of legislative social security shocks is constructed for Germany. The dataset covers major legal changes in benefits and contributions from 1970 to 2018. We estimate their macroeconomic effects in a proxy SVAR. The GDP response to a cut in contributions yields a fiscal multiplier of about 0.4 on impact that fades relatively quickly. For benefit increases the impact multiplier is ...

Revisiting the Income-Health Nexus: The Importance of Choosing the "Right" Indicator

We show that the choice of the welfare measure has a substantial impact on the degree of welfare-related health inequality. Combining various income and wealth measures with different health measures, we calculate 80 health concentration indices. The influence of the welfare measure is more pronounced when using subjective health measures than when using objective health measures.

In Vino Pecunia? The Association Between Beverage-Specific Drinking Behavior and Wages

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 ...

The Short-Term Population Health Effects of Weather and Pollution: Implications of Climate Change

This study comprehensively assesses the immediate effects of extreme weather conditions and high concentrations of ambient air pollution on population health. For Germany and the years 1999 to 2008, we link the universe of all 170 million hospital admissions, along with all 8 million deaths, with weather and pollution data reported at the day-county level. Extreme heat significantly increases hospitalizations ...

Top-down vs. Bottom-up: The Long-Term Impact of Government Ideology and Personal Experience on Values

This paper studies the long-term impact of societal socialization on values using the example of doping behavior in sports. We apply the German Reunification Approach to the microcosm of Berlin and exploit its 40-year long division into a capitalist and a communist sector. We deliberately chose attitudes toward doping to test the impact of ideology on values since (i) post-1989 disappointed economic ...

Persistent Educational Advantage Across Three Generations: Empirical Evidence for Germany

This article uses survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) to analyze the persistence of educational attainment across three generations in Germany. I obtain evidence of a robust effect of grandparents’ education on respondents’ own educational attainment in West Germany, net of parental class, education, occupational status, family income, parents’ relationship history, and family ...