Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

A Sorting Hat that Fails? The transition from Primary to Secondary School in Germany

The recently published data from the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) has revealed that Germany ranks lowest among the OECD countries for educational equalities. This paper examines whether it is the tracking of children into different types of school environments at a particularly early stage of their intellectual development, i.e. at the transition from primary to secondary school, ...

Does Family Really Matter? - Sibling Correlations in Permanent Economic Outcomes in Germany

Contributing to a growing literature on sibling correlations, this paper is the first to present results for Germany. On the basis of data from the GSOEP, around one third of the variance or inequality in permanent earnings for men and around one fourth for women can be attributed to family characteristics during childhood. This indicates a slightly lower influence of family on women’s outcomes. The ...

Extent and Effects of Employees in Germany Forgoing Vacation Time

Around 37 percent of those in paid full-time employment in Germany did not claim their full vacation entitlement last year. The number of vacation days actually taken by each employee was on average three days less than the full entitlement. This equates to around twelve percent of the overall volume of vacation entitlement not being used. This figure is corroborated by data from the German Socio-Economic ...

How important is cultural background for the level of intergenerational mobility?

Based on brother correlations in permanent earnings for different groups of second generation immigrants, the findings in this paper indicate that cultural background is not a major determinant of the level of intergenerational economic mobility.

Changes in Sports Participation across Transition to Retirement: Modification by Migration Background and Acculturation Status

While total physical activity decreases over the life course, sports and leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) have shown to increase after transition to retirement. This paper aimed to investigate whether this change in sports participation differs (1) between non-migrant persons (NMP) versus persons with a migrant background (PMB), and (2) by acculturation status. Data was drawn from 16 waves of ...

Does the IAB employment sample reliably identify maternity leave taking? A data report

On the Equivalence of Common Approaches to Cross Sectional Weights in Household Panel Surveys

The computation of cross sectional weights in household panels is challenging because household compositions change over time. Sampling probabilities of new household entrants are generally not known and assigning them zero weight is not satisfying. Two common approaches to cross sectional weighting address this issue: (1) “shared weights” and (2) modeling or estimating unobserved sampling probabilities ...

The implementation of cross-sectional weights in household panel surveys

While household panel surveys are longitudinal in nature cross-sectional sampling weights are also of interest. The computation of cross-sectional weights is challenging because household compositions change over time. Sampling probabilities of household entrants after wave 1 are generally not known and assigning them zero weight is not satisfying. Two common approaches to cross-sectional weighting ...

Collecting Genetic Samples in Population Wide (Panel) Surveys: Feasibility, Nonresponse and Selectivity

Collecting biomarkers as part of general purpose surveys offers scientists - and social scientists in particular - the ability to study biosocial phenomena, e.g. the relation between genes and human behavior. We explore the feasibility of collecting buccal cells for genetic analyses with normal interviewers as part of a pretest for the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) using a probability sample. ...

Household survey panels: how much do following rules affect sample size?

In household panels, typically all household members are surveyed. Because household composition changes over time, so-called following rules are implemented to decide whether to continue surveying household members who leave the household (e.g. former spouses/partners, grown children) in subsequent waves. Following rules have been largely ignored in the literature leaving panel designers unaware of ...