Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Drivers of Loneliness among Older Refugees

Although older refugees can be seen as particularly vulnerable to social isolation and loneliness, they are often overlooked by ageing and migration scholars. This article addresses this research gap by identifying and examining potential drivers of loneliness among older refugees. The study analysed data from the first two waves of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees, focusing on 958 individuals ...

Can television reduce xenophobia? The case of East Germany

Can television have a mitigating effect on xenophobia? To explore this question, we investigate a natural experiment in which individuals in some regions of East Germany could not - due to their geographic location - consume West German television until 1989. By analyzing survey data from the periods before and after German reunification, we provide evidence that individuals who received West German ...

The Public Sector Wage Gap in Spain: Evidence from Income Tax Data

This paper studies the public sector wage gap by gender and skill level in Spain using recent administrative data from tax records. We estimate wage distributions in the presence of covariates separately for men and women in the public sector and in the private sector. Then, we decompose the public sector wage gap along the wage distribution and isolate the part due to differences in the remunerations ...

Homeownership rates, housing policies, and co-residence decisions

Homeownership rates differ widely across European countries. We document that part of this variation is driven by differences in the fraction of adults co-residing with their parents. Comparing Germany and Italy, we show that in contrast to homeownership rates per household, homeownership rates per individual are very similar during the first part of the life cycle. To understand these patterns, we ...

Physical activity, health, and life satisfaction: Four panel studies demonstrate reciprocal effects

We examined the between-person correlations and within-person reciprocal effects of physical activity, long-standing health issues, self-rated health, and life satisfaction across four panels using random intercept cross-lagged panel models. Data were analyzed from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA, N = 32,913, 21 waves, 1-year intervals), the German Socio-Economic ...

SOEP Annual Report 2021

SOEP Annual Report 2022

The Speed of Earnings Responses to Taxation and the Role of Firm Labor Demand

This paper studies the speed at which workers’ pretax earnings respond to tax changes along the intensive margin. We do so in the context of Germany, where a large notch in the tax schedule induces sharp bunching in the earnings distribution. We analyze earnings responses to two policy reforms that shift this notch outward and find clear evidence that frictions delay the earnings responses of more ...

Wealth and mortality among late-middle-aged individuals in Norway: a nationwide register-based retrospective study

Background In recent decades, we have observed rising wealth inequality while the pace of growth of life expectancy has slowed in many Western welfare democracies. There is scarce evidence, however, on links between wealth and mortality. The main methodological limitation in this area of scholarship is its inability to account for individuals' unobserved heterogeneity, such as personality and ...

Unequal access to protection? Selection patterns over arrival cohorts of Syrians seeking refuge in Lebanon, Turkey, and Germany

Introduction: An ample scholarly literature on voluntary migration has shown that migration is a highly selective process, resulting in migrant populations that often differ significantly from their respective population of origin in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics. The literature attributes these differences to either migrants' active choice and agency in the migration decision ...