Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Who feels constrained by high debt burdens? Subjective vs. objective measures of household debt

This paper analyzes differences in self-assessed debt burdens of German households confronted with an objective debt burden. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, my econometric analysis shows that a household's subjective debt burden is not only influenced by the current constellation of income, debt service and, possibly, the potential subsistence level, but also by expectations of ...

Broke, Ill, and Obese: Is There an Effect of Household Debt on Health?

We analyze the association between household indebtedness and different health outcomes using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1999 to 2009. We control for unobserved heterogeneity by applying fixed-effects methods and furthermore use a subsample of constantly employed individuals plus lagged debt variables to reduce problems of reverse causality. We apply different measures of household ...

Combining employment and care-giving: how differing care intensities influence employment patterns among middle-aged women in Germany

Given an ageing population and increased participation by women in the labour force, the relationship between unpaid care and the availability of women to the labour force is gaining in importance as an issue. This article assesses the impact of unpaid care on transitions into employment by women aged between 45 and 59 years. It uses the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from the years 2001–2014 to ...

Is Part-Time Employment after Childbirth a Stepping-Stone into Full-Time Work? A Cohort Study for East and West Germany

Does part-time work support first-time mothers? employment by providing a stepping-stone into full-time work in Germany? Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984?2012, this study compares three different age cohorts of first-time East and West German mothers to investigate whether there has been any convergence between East and West Germany in the way women use part-time employment. ...

Atypical forms of employment in the public sector - are there any?

The paper deals with various forms of atypical employment in the public sector that are widely neglected in existing research; its specific focus is on their development, scope, distribution and structural features. In the first part we break down the purely statistical category and differentiate between the disparate forms (part-time, marginal employment or minijobs, midijobs, fixed-term, agency work). ...

Alcohol: Does It Make You Successful? A Longitudinal Analysis

This thesis analyzes the link between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes, such as income, employment or hazard rate of leaving unemployment. It does so by using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) forthe period 2006 until 2010. While cross-sectional methods show a positive relationship between non-abusive alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes, fixed effects methods ...

Biographical Consequences of Teenage Motherhood in Germany

It is commonly held that teenage motherhood negatively impacts the mother’s further life course. This paper deals with the question of the consequences teenage motherhood has on the long run for the young mother’s educational and employment career as well as for partnership stability. To explore the research questions linear and logistic regressions based on the SOEP (1984 – 2009) are conducted. In ...

Who Dares, Wins? - A sibling analysis of tertiary education transition in Germany

Past studies have found that parental background has a considerable impact on educational decisions. Our knowledge is, however, still limited regarding educational transitions later in life, such as into tertiary education. Is parental background a predominant factor in this relatively late educational decision, or do individual talent and determination have an impact of their own? We address this ...

Labor Supply Decisions in Germany - A Semiparametric Regression Analysis

Residential mobility in East and West Germany: mobility rates, mobility reasons, reurbanization

Before unification, the processes of residential mobility in East and West Germany were very different, and remarkable variations in mobility still persisted until the mid 1990s. Following a wave of residential suburbanization and of heavy residential construction, as well as refurbishments in the new Länder during the second half of the 1990s, mobility rates strongly increased in East Germany. After ...