Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Measuring the Distribution of Well-Being: Why Income and Consumption Give Different Answers

Under-Utilisation of Holiday Entitlements as a Career Investment

The existing literature has provided evidence for the hypothesis that employees work unpaid overtime, because they regard it as an investment in their career. I show that the determinants of the under-utilisation of holiday entitlements in the United Kingdom and Germany are widely similar to those of unpaid overtime work. The main finding of the study is that the investment hypothesis determines this ...

Social influences on trajectories of self-rated health: evidence from Britain, Germany, Denmark and the United States

Background: We investigate social inequalities in self-rated health dynamics for working-aged adults in four nations, representing distinct welfare regime types. The aims are to: describe average national trajectories of self-rated health over a 7-year period; identify social determinants of cross-sectional and longitudinal health; and compare cross-national patterns. Methods: Data are from national ...

Pet ownership is good for your health and saves public expenditure too: Australian and German longitudinal evidence

The Duration and Extent of Poverty - Is Germany a Two-Thirds-Society?

German Reunification: Welfare Gains and Losses East and West

A framework of welfare accounts (Juster and Stafford, 1985; Headey, 1993; see also Goodin et al., 1999) is used to assess gains and losses to East and West Germans in the post-reunification period, 1990-97. The welfare accounts have three segments: a capital/stocks account, an income/flows account and a subjective welfare/psychic income account. This framework differs from conventional welfare economic ...

(Not) Sharing the Fruits of Growth: The Impact of Governments and Markets on Living Standards in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, 1986-1995

This paper reviews changing income distributions in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands, treating the three countries as leading economic performers in ‘the three worlds of welfare capitalism.’ Previous analyses have shown that earnings dispersion is increasing. The potential impact of government through the tax and transfer system has been largely ignored. It is shown that in the United ...

Who enjoys the fruits of growth? Impact of governments and markets on living standards in Germany, the Netherlands and the U.S.A., 1987-1996

The 1980s and 1990s have been decades of quite good economic growth in North America and much of Western Europe. But how have the fruits of growth been shared? This paper reviews changing income distributions in the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands. These three countries may be taken as exemplars and leading economic performers in “the three worlds of welfare capitalism” (Esping-Andersen, 1990). The ...

Does Religion Make You Healthier and Longer Lived? Evidence for Germany

Researchers in the US have consistently reported substantial—not just statistically significant—links between religious belief and practice, and improved health and longevity. In this paper we report evidence for Germany, using data from the long-running, nationally representative German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP 1984). The SOEP dataset includes multiple measures of health, plus many ‘controls’ which ...

SOEP Wave Report 1-2008. A Quarter Century of Change: Results from the German Socio-Economic Panel

This is the first of what, it is hoped, will become an annual series of Wave Reports on the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey Study (SOEP). SOEP has now been running for a quarter of century (1984-2008). Twenty-five waves of data have been collected. So some respondents, about 2,500 middle aged and older people, have kindly agreed to be interviewed twenty-five times. The central theme of SOEP is ‘subjective ...