Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

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 ...

The Complexity of Personality: Advantages of a Genetically Sensitive Multi-Group Design

Findings from many behavioral genetic studies utilizing the classical twin design suggest that genetic and non-shared environmental effects play a significant role in human personality traits. This study focuses on the methodological advantages of extending the sampling frame to include multiple dyads of relatives. We investigated the sensitivity of heritability estimates to the inclusion of sibling ...

The Nature and Extent of Job Separations in Germany: Some New Evidence from SOEP

This paper analyses job separations in Germany using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel spanning from 1984 to 2003. Based on detailed reasons for job separation and different SOEP samples, the paper attempts to establish the nature of job separations in Germany. It brings to light some patterns of separations that have hitherto been unexplored. The findings of the study suggest, among others, ...

A Practical Guide for the Computation of Domain-Level Estimates with the Socio-Economic Panel (And Other Household Surveys)

There is a huge interest in deriving and comparing socio-economic indicators across societal groups and domains. The indicators are usually derived from population surveys like the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) by direct estimation. Small sample sizes in the domains can limit the precision of these estimates. For example, while SOEP may be a suitable database for determining mean income in Germany, ...

Migration and the Inter-Industry Wage-Structure in Germany

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the World's Household Panel Data Sets

This article describes four household panel data sets: the American Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the German Socio-Economic Panel, the British Household Panel Study, the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics and the Cross-National Equivalent File.

Social Deprivation of Immigrants in Germany

This paper investigates the extent to which immigrants in Germany are socially deprived compared to German natives. We demonstrate that when using a conventional definition of the social deprivation index typically applied in the literature, immigrants do not necessarily appear to be socially deprived. We propose a weighting scheme that weights components of social deprivation by their subjective contribution ...

Killing them with Kindness: Negative Distributional Externalities of Increasing UI Benefits

Of the many labour market Hartz IV reforms that have been implemented in Germany since 2005, the role of short-term unemployment insurance has not received much attention. In this paper we examine distributional effects of labour earnings and unemployment benefits using simulated increases in unemployment insurance replacement rates or equivalently, increases in the net present value of benefit duration. ...

Endogeneity in the relation between poverty, wealth and life satisfaction

This paper concentrates on the complex interplay between poverty, wealth and life satisfaction. Main areas of life are quantified in a multidimensional approach of poverty and wealth: Individual income, current health, occupational autonomy or employment status and life satisfaction. The analyzed data was taken from the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research ...

Life satisfaction and unemployment - the role of voluntariness and job prospects

By using longitudinal data the relation between satisfaction with life and unemployment is analyzed in this study. Data used in this publication were made available by the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Berlin. A period from 1998-2009 is evaluated. This publication has two goals. (1) To estimate the effects of voluntary and involuntary ...