Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Smoking Behaviour in Germany: Evidence from the SOEP

As in most OECD countries, smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption have been decreasing in Germany since the early 2000s. This paper analyses whether smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption, as well as their development over time, differ between socio-economic subgroups. Identifying these differences provides insights into the effect of policy interventions on German smoking behaviour. Based ...

Measuring Fuel Poverty: General Considerations and Application to German Household Data

Indicators of energy affordability and fuel poverty are a powerful tool to identify the most vulnerable households and to avoid imposing excessive burdens by climate policy. Fuel-poverty measurement consists of two independent parts: first, the definition of an appropriate fuel-poverty line, and secondly, techniques to measure fuel poverty. This paper reviews options for the definition of fuel-poverty ...

Do Temporary Workers Receive Risk Premiums? Assessing the Wage Effects of Fixed–term Contracts in West Germany by a Matching Estimator Compared with Parametric Approaches

The wage effects of fixed–term contracts (FTCs) are analysed with the German Socio–Economic Panel (GSOEP) for West Germany. Taking selection on observables into account results in an estimated wage effect of −6 percent up to −10 percent. Controlling additionally for selection on unobservables leads to wage effects of −23 percent, which may be explained by self–selection of workers. The results also ...

Do Fixed-Term Contracts Increase the Long-Term Employment Opportunities of the Unemployed?

Confounding True and Random Changes in Categorical Panel Data: Regression to the mean and Regression to the mode

The main advantage of panel analysis is that changes can be investigated at the individual level. However, the observed individual changes result not only from underlying, true changes but also from random fluctuations. The problem is that these random fluctuations may lead to systematically looking patterns of change that seemingly beg for substantive, theoretical explanations. Notorious in this respect ...

Short measurements of personality – Validity and reliability of the GSOEP Big Five Inventory (BFI-S)

In the last decade, an upward trend in the use of short measurements for personality can be observed. The goal of this study was to explore the psychometric characteristics of the GSOEP Big Five Inventory (BFI-S; Gerlitz & Schupp, 2005), a 15-item instrument. We compared the BFI-S with the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992a, 1992b) in a sample of 598 German adults (mean age = 42 years). Despite ...

Current Twin Studies in Germany: Report on CoSMoS, SOEP, and ChronoS

This article summarizes the status of three recent German twin studies: CoSMoS, SOEP, and ChronoS. The German twin study on Cognitive Ability, Self-Reported Motivation, and School Achievement (CoSMoS) is a three-wave longitudinal study of monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared together, and aims to investigate predictors of and influences on school performance. In the first wave of the data collection ...

Predictors of Refugee Adjustment: The Importance of Cognitive Skills and Personality

In light of the recent worldwide migration of refugees, determinants of a more or less successful integration are heavily discussed, but reliable empirical investigations are scarce and have often focused on sociodemographic factors. In the present study, we explore the role of several individual characteristics for refugee adjustment in the areas of (a) institutional, (b) interpersonal and (c) intrapersonal ...

Coping With Unemployment: The Impact of Unemployment Duration and Personality on Trajectories of Life Satisfaction

Unemployment is a major life event that causes an enormous drop in people's life satisfaction. However, there is substantial variability in people's ability (or inability) to cope with the experience of unemployment. In the present study, we examined the causes of individual differences in trajectories of life satisfaction when people were faced with unemployment by taking into account the ...

Beyond the Heritability of Life Satisfaction – The Roles of Personality and Twin-Specific Influences

In a behavior genetic design, we investigated individual differences in life satisfaction and its relation to personality with respect to both internal and external influences. We questioned the absence of shared environment and examined the specific contribution of additive and non-additive genetic influences. We also tested for twin-specific environmental influences in a total sample of 1,308 dyads ...