Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Adolescent Sports Participation, Social Skills and Attitudes, and the School-to-Work Transition

This paper investigates the hypothesis to which extent informal learning activities of youths during leisure contribute to shaping educational attainment as well as social and career aspirations. Specifically, we analyze the determinants of participating in sports during adolescence and the effects on educational attainment and youths' assessments of the determinants of social success and important ...

The effect of co-ethnic social capital on immigrants' labor market integration: a natural experiment

Empirically identifying the causal effect of social capital on immigrants’ economic prospects is a challenging task due to the non-random residential sorting of immigrants into locations with greater opportunities for prior or co-ethnic connections. Our study addresses this selection-bias issue by using a natural-experimental dataset of refugees and other immigrants who were exogenously allocated to ...

Sources of growing labour market inequalities among low-skilled men in Western Germany

We use the German Socio-Economic Panel 1984-2008 to identify the sources of this apparent „polarization“ among unskilled men. We start by confirming that earnings inequality among low-skilled men has grown substantially (measured as earnings over a given three-year period in order to minimize effects of short-term fluctuations). Drawing on economic and sociological theories, we then discuss potential ...

An economical measure of attitudes towards artificial intelligence in work, healthcare, and education (ATTARI-WHE)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has profoundly transformed numerous facets of both private and professional life. Understanding how people evaluate AI is crucial for predicting its future adoption and addressing potential barriers. However, existing instruments measuring attitudes towards AI often focus on specific technologies or cross-domain evaluations, while domain-specific measurement instruments ...

Nearly 1.1 million people in Germany use food banks, single and separated parents in particular at an above-average frequency

Food banks are returning to the spotlight as their use increases due to the coronavirus pandemic and the influx of Ukrainian refugees to Germany. The current discussion is focused on whether the food banks can handle the increasing number of users as well as the financial and organizational challenges that come with them. Until now, however, no robust, empirical data on food bank use has been available. ...

Fertility decisions and children opportunity costs: A panel study for Germany

This paper investigates the dilemma between family and career faced by women due to the high opportunity costs of children, and the impact of “family friendly” public policies on both fertility and labour market participation in Germany. For this purpose, we propose an original lifecycle model with endogenous wages, fertility, female labour supply and child care decisions. We apply the model using ...

Testing a One-Item Risk Measure to Predict Alameda Seven Health Behaviors in the Republic of Korea

Changes in emotional problems, hyperactivity and conduct problems in moderate to late preterm children and adolescents born between 1958 and 2002 in the United Kingdom

Background: Preterm birth is a risk factor for the development of emotional and behavioural problems in childhood and adolescence. Given the substantial improvements in neonatal care across decades, it has been expected that the difference in emotional problems, hyperactivity, and conduct problems between moderate to late preterm (MLPT) and full term (FT) children and adolescents have declined in recent ...

Problems in peer relationships and low engagement in romantic relationships in preterm born adolescents: effects of maternal warmth in early childhood

This study examined whether maternal warmth in early childhood moderates the association between preterm birth and problems in peer relationships and low engagement in romantic relationships in adolescence. We studied 9193 individuals from the Millennium Cohort Study in the United Kingdom, 99 (1.1%) of whom were born very preterm (VPT; < 32 weeks of gestation) and 629 (6.8%) moderate-to-late preterm ...

Entrepreneurial worries: Self-employment and potential loss of well-being

The relationship between self-employment and life satisfaction has been shown to be heterogeneous in the literature. This paper analyzes a channel through which lower well-being can come about for the self-employed, namely, their worries about their business (“entrepreneurial worries”). Using a two-way fixed effects estimator on German panel data (1984–2020), I find no overall effect of becoming self-employed ...