Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Risk Aversion and Trade Union Membership

If trade unions provide only their members with insurance against income variations, as a private good, this insurance will provide a stronger incentive for more risk-averse employees to become union members. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and various direct measures of individual risk attitudes, we find robust evidence of a positive relationship between risk aversion and the ...

Direct Evidence on Income Comparisons and Subjective Well-Being

Subjective well-being (SWB) is generally argued to rise with relative income. However, direct evidence is scarce on whether and how intensively individuals undertake income comparisons, to whom they relate, and what they perceive their relative income to be. In this paper, novel data with direct information on income comparison intensity and perceived relative income with respect to predetermined reference ...

Keeping up with the Joneses: Income Comparisons and Labour Supply

We investigate whether working time is related to the intensity of income comparisons and relative income. Our simple theoretical model demonstrates that the effects of relative income concerns depend on whether an individual can choose contractual working hours and/or overtime. In the empirical analysis we rely on novel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), which contains direct information ...

Direct evidence for income comparisons and subjective well-being across reference groups

This note provides evidence for the relationship between income comparisons and subjective wellbeing (SWB), using novel German data on self-reported comparison intensity and perceived relative income for seven reference groups. We find negative correlations between comparison intensity and SWB for colleagues, people in the same occupation and friends, but not for other reference groups, such as neighbours. ...

Trade union membership and sickness absence: Evidence from a sick pay reform

In 1996, statutory sick pay was reduced for private sector workers in Germany. Using the empirical observation that trade union members are dismissed less often than non-members, we construct a theoretical model to predict how absence behaviour will respond to the sick pay reform. We show that union members may have stronger incentives (1) to be absent and (2) to react to the cut in sick pay. In the ...

Automobile access, peer effects and happiness

While happiness research in transportation is an emerging topic, this is the first study that uses the German SOEP 2003 data to study the role of peer effects in automobile access on self reported subjective well-being following the approach by Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2005). Defining peers based on age, education and location, we find that the peer’s average automobile availability has a statistically ...

The Determinants of Smoking Initiation - Empirical Evidence for Germany

This paper aims at analyzing the determinants of the decision to start smoking using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). The data used is a combination of retrospective information on the age individuals started smoking and, by tracing back these individuals within the panel structure up to the point they started smoking, information on characteristics at the age of smoking initiation. ...

Smoking initiation in Germany: the role of intergenerational transmission

This paper analyzes the decision to start smoking using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Our focus is on the role that parental smoking behavior plays for children's smoking initiation. The data used are a combination of retrospective information on the age individuals started smoking and, by tracing back these individuals within the panel structure up to that point, information ...

Evaluating how child allowances and daycare subsidies affect fertility

We compare the cost effectiveness of two pronatalist policies: (a) child allowances; and (b) daycare subsidies. We pay special attention to estimating how intended fertility (fertility before children are born) responds to these policies. We use two evaluation tools: (i) a dynamic model on fertility, labor supply, outsourced childcare time, parental time, asset accumulation and consumption; and (ii) ...

Globalization, social inequality, and the impact on institutional determinants on youth unemployment in Western Europe