Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Unmet Aspirations as an Explanation for the Age U-shape in Human Wellbeing

A large literature in behavioral and social sciences has found that human wellbeing follows a U-shape over age. Some theories have assumed that the U-shape is caused by unmet expectations that are felt painfully in midlife but beneficially abandoned and experienced with less regret during old age. In a unique panel of 132,609 life satisfaction expectations matched to subsequent realizations, I find ...

Trends in the Income Distribution of Unified Germany Analyzed by Decomposable Inequality Measures

Using Panel Data on Income Satisfaction to Estimate the Equivalence Scale Elasticity

Living Conditions of Children and Parental Well-Being - Evidence from German Data on Life Satisfaction

Subjective Measures of Economic Well-Being and the Influence of Income Uncertainty

This paper provides evidence that subjective measures of individual well being can be used to study the impact of income uncertainty from an ex ante point of view. Two different measures of subjective well being are under study: Satisfaction with household income and the income evaluation question as developed by Van Praag. It can be shown that satisfaction with income is more affected by ex ante than ...

Simulating German Income and Social Security Tax Payments Using the GSOEP

How Income Inequality changed in Germany following Reunification: An empirical Analysis using Decomposable Inequality Measures

Health-Related Life Cycle Risks and Public Insurance

This paper proposes a dynamic life cycle model of health risks, employment, early retirement, and wealth accumulation in order to analyze the health-related risks of consumption and old age poverty. In particular, the model includes a health process, the interaction between health and employment risks, and an explicit modeling of the German public insurance schemes. I rely on a dynamic programming ...

Spillover Effects of Maternal Education on Child’s Health and Health Behavior

This study investigates the effects of maternal education on child’s health and health behavior. We draw on a rich German panel data set containing information about three generations. This allows instrumenting maternal education by the number of her siblings while conditioning on grandparental characteristics. The instrumental variables approach has not yet been used in the intergenerational context ...

The role of time preferences in educational decision making

We analyze the implication of time-inconsistent preferences in educational decision making and corresponding policies using a structural dynamic choice model. We make two important research contributions. First, we estimate our model using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (soep) and provide quantitative evidence for time-inconsistent behavior in educational decision making. Second, we evaluate ...