Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Trends in Self-Employment in Germany: Different Types, Different Developments? (Chapter Two)

The different faces of in-work poverty across welfare state regimes

Unemployment Alters the Set-Point of Life Satisfaction

According to set-point theories of subjective well-being, people react to events but then return to baseline levels of happiness and satisfaction over time. We tested this idea by examining reaction and adaptation to unemployment in a 15-year longitudinal study of more than 24,000 individuals living in Germany. In accordance with set-point theories, individuals reacted strongly to unemployment and ...

How stable is happiness? Using the STARTS model to estimate the stability of life satisfaction

A common interpretation of existing subjective well-being research is that long-term levels of well-being are almost completely stable. However, few studies have estimated stability and change using appropriate statistical models that can precisely address this question. The STARTS model (Kenny & Zautra, 2001) was used to analyze life satisfaction data from two nationally representative panel studies. ...

Personality Development Across the Life Span: Longitudinal Analyses With a National Sample From Germany

Longitudinal data from a national sample of Germans (N = 20,434) were used to evaluate stability and change in the Big Five personality traits. Participants completed a brief measure of personality twice, 4 years apart. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to establish measurement invariance over time and across age groups. Substantive questions about differential (or rank-order) and mean-level ...

Estimating the Reliability of Single-Item Life Satisfaction Measures: Results from Four National Panel Studies

Life satisfaction is often assessed using single-item measures. However, estimating the reliability of these measures can be difficult because internal consistency coefficients cannot be calculated. Existing approaches use longitudinal data to isolate occasion-specific variance from variance that is either completely stable or variance that changes systematically over time. In these approaches, reliable ...

East-West Couples: Distribution, Characteristics and Stability

SOEP data were used to examine relationships consisting of one partner socialised in West Germany and one in East Germany and who presently reside in the “old” (former West German) or “new” (newly for med East German) federal states. The estimated share of east-west couples among all marriages or cohabiting couples rises continuously within the observed period reaching approximately two and eleven ...

Two Worlds of Retirement Income: A comparative Analysis of Retirement-Income Outcomes Using the Luxembourg Income Study

Occupational Change in Britain and Germany

We use British and German panel data to analyse job changes involving a change in occupation. We assess the extent of occupational change, taking into account the possibility of measurement error in occupational codes; whether job changes within the occupation differ from occupation changes in terms of the characteristics of those making such switches; and the effects of the two kinds of moves in terms ...

Measuring Individual Risk Attitudes in the Lab: Task or Ask? An Empirical Comparison

This paper compares two prominent empirical measures of individual risk attitudes | the Holt and Laury (2002) lottery-choice task and the multi-item questionnaire advocated by Dohmen, Falk, Huffman, Schupp, Sunde and Wagner (forthcoming) | with respect to (a) their within-subject stability over time (one year) and (b) their correlation with actual risk-taking behaviour in the lab - here the amount ...