Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Demographic Change and Regional Labour Markets: The Case of Eastern Germany

Demographic change will be one of the most challenging issues for industrialized economies in the decades to come. In this paper, we focus on the impact of demographic change on labour markets. By setting up a stylized model of a regional labour market, we are able to analyze the interaction of labour demand and supply during demographic transitions. The simulation results for eastern Germany, a forerunner ...

Individual Determinants of Recalls

Retirement Expectations in Germany—Towards Rising Social Inequality?

In the last 20 years, German policy makers have reformed the pension system and the labor market with the aim of prolonging working life. As a consequence, older workers’ employment rate and average retirement age rose. In addition to the actual behavior of today’s retiree cohorts, the reforms also influence the expected retirement age of future pensioners, the development of which will be investigated ...

Members of German Federal Parliament More Risk-Loving Than General Population

The article analyzes the question of whether career politicians differ systematically from the general population in terms of their attitudes toward risk. A written survey of members of the 17th German Bundestag in late 2011 identified their risk attitudes, and the survey data was set in relation to respondents to the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the survey year 2009 (2002 through 2012). ...

Are political representatives more risk-loving than the electorate? Evidence from German federal and state parliaments

Political representatives frequently make decisions with far-reaching implications for citizens and societies. Most of these decisions are choices in situations in which the probabilities of gains and losses are hard to estimate. Although decision-making is crucial to politics, existing research has hardly ever addressed the political representation of traits that notably influence decision-making. ...

Believe In A Just Wage? The Effect Of Personality On Labour Market Outcomes

This paper examines the impact of students' non-cognitive skills locus of control and self-esteem on their decision to enroll at college, and on their wages once they enter the labour market. We extend previous research in several ways: a model of belief formation suggests a pathway by which these traits affect economic outcomes and allows to derive testable predictions concerning individuals' ...

Work and the Life Course: A Cosmopolitan-Local Perspective

Late-Career Risks in Changing Welfare States: A Comparison of Germany and the United States since the 1980s

Adding Scars to Wrinkles? Long-run Effects of Late-Career Job Loss on Retirement Behavior and Personal Income

Despite a growing interest in the effects of job loss, research on its consequences for older workers and their economic situation in retirement remains scant. Using 30 years of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we examine the incidence and consequences of job loss at ages 50 to 64, following displaced workers for up to 10 years after displacement. We implement a difference-in-differences ...

The Baby Year Parental Leave Reform in the GDR and Its Impact on Children’s Long-Term Life Satisfaction

This article investigates the effects of an increase in paid parental leave — twelve months instead of six months — on children’s long-term life satisfaction. The historical setting under study, namely the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), allows us to circumvent problems of selection of women into the labor market and an insufficient or heterogeneous non-parental child care supply, which are ...