Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Dynamics of Long-Term Care Service Use in Germany

Population aging and changing family patterns have made elder care an important issue. In 1994, German lawmakers enacted a major reform in the country's long-term care policy, the Dependency Insurance Act (DIA). How, and in what way, will the relative use of formal and informal long-term care services change in response? We address this question using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic ...

Literacy and the Migrant-Native Wage Gap

Being able to read and write is one of the most important skills in modern economies. Literacy frequently is a prerequisite for employment and its relevance for productivity and wages is magnified by the fact that it is only through literacy that many other skills become usable. More so than for natives, this argument applies to migrants: even those with high levels of human capital acquired in the ...

Rent Indices for Housing in West Germany 1985 to 1998

Does better education cause higher income?

While the positive influence of higher education on income has been repeatedly confirmed, the linking channel can be ambiguous. Within the framework of estimating the effect of income on life satisfaction, various sources of endogeneity caused by joint determination are addressed and the earnings equation is reconsidered, too: We cast doubt on the hypothesis of the direct influence of educational achievement ...

Social Causation Versus Health Selection in the Life Course: Does Their Relative Importance Differ by Dimension of SES?

A person’s socioeconomic status (SES) can affect health (social causation) and health can affect SES (health selection). The findings for each of these pathways may depend on how SES is measured. We study (1) whether social causation or health selection is more important for overall health inequalities, (2) whether this differs between stages of the life course, and (3) between measures of SES. Using ...

Inequality of Personal Income in the Enlarged EU: The Role of the Welfare States, Regional Cohesion Policies and Economic Integration

Unconditional Child Benefits, Mothers’ Labor Supply, and Family Well-Being: Evidence from a Policy Reform

In many parts of the developed world, governments devote a significant share of public funds to unconditional family cash transfers in an attempt to promote the economic well-being of households. But how successful are such policies? Germany has one of the world’s most generous child benefit systems, which was subject to a major reform in the mid-1990s. This article exploits the reform using a difference-in-differences ...

Political Socialization in Flux? Linking Family Non-Intactness during Childhood to Adult Civic Engagement

Some sociologists argue that non-intact family structures during childhood have a negative effect on adult children's civic engagement, since they undermine, and in some cases prevent, the processes and activities through which parents shape their children's political attitudes and orientations. In this paper, we evaluate this hypothesis on the basis of longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic ...

Exposure to television and individual beliefs: Evidence from a natural experiment

Does the information provided by mass media have the power to persistently affect individual beliefs about the drivers of success in life? To answer this question empirically, this contribution exploits a natural experiment on the reception of West German television in the former German Democratic Republic. After identifying the impact of Western television on individual beliefs and attitudes in the ...

Globalization, income distribution and voter preferences: Transmission mechanisms and reform acceptance (Dissertation)