Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Income Inequality, Redistribution and Well-Being. Evidence From Longitudinal Data on Life Satisfaction

Are People Inequality Averse, and Do They Prefer Redistribution by the State? Evidence from German Longitudinal Data on Life Satisfaction

Income Effects of Unemployment and Short-Time Work in the East German Transformation Process

Earnings Dynamics in the East German Transition Process

Earning Dynamics in the East German Transition Process

What Can Happiness Research Tell Us About Altruism? - Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

Happiness and altruism within the extended family

We propose a direct measure of altruism between parents and adult children, using survey data on happiness from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 2000–2004. The question of altruism within families has policy relevance, for example, to understand whether public transfers crowd out private ones. Previous empirical evidence, based on observed transfer behavior, has failed to establish a clear ...

Is Posner right? An empirical test of the Posner argument for transferring health spending from old women to old men

Posner (Aging and old age, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995) proposes the redistribution of health spending from old women to old men to equalize life expectancy. His argument is based on the assumption that the woman’s utility is higher if her husband is alive. Using self-reported satisfaction measures from a long-running German panel survey, the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), the present ...

How working hours influence the life satisfaction of childless men and women, fathers and mothers in Germany

This paper uses the German Socio-Economic Panel to show that fathers – and to a lesser degree childless men and women, are most satisfied with life when working full-time or longer. In contrast, whether mothers spend more or less hours in employment hardly affects their life satisfaction. The rational maximization of income as postulated by family economics cannot explain these results, as they are ...

Income Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Unrelated Between Countries, Associated Within Countries Over Time

This article shows for the first time that people are less satisfied when inequality in their country is higher than before, but not when inequality in their country is higher than in another country. It distinguishes this between- and within-country effect of inequality on life satisfaction by using hybrid regressions with the World Values Survey, the British Household Panel Study, the Australian ...