Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The life-cycle and the business-cycle of wage risk — Cross-country comparisons

We provide evidence on life-cycle and business-cycle fluctuations in the dispersion of household-level wage innovations, comparing the US, the UK, and Germany. First, we find that household characteristics explain about 25% of the dispersion in wages within an age group in all three countries. Second, the cross-sectional variance of wages is almost linearly increasing in household age in all three ...

Happiness and the Persistence of Income Shocks

We reassess the empirical effects of income and employment on self-reported well-being. Our analysis makes use of a two-step estimation procedure that allows us to apply instrumental variable regressions with ordinal observable data. As suggested by the theory of incomplete markets, we differentiate between the effects of persistent and transitory income shocks. In line with this theory, we find that ...

Which Ladder to Climb? Decomposing Life Cycle Wage Dynamics

Wages grow and become more unequal as workers age. Economic theory focuses on worker investment in human capital, search for employers, and residual wage shocks to account for these life cycle wage dynamics. We highlight the importance of jobs: collections of tasks and duties defined by employers within the production process. We provide empirical evidence that climbing the career ladder toward jobs ...

Factors influencing tenure choice in European countries

Homeownership rates are very different across European countries. They range from below 50% in Germany to over 80% in Greece, Spain or Ireland. However the differences lie not only in the overall homeownership rates but also in its structure, and this is the focus of this paper. Its aim is to study the impact of microeconomic factors on household’s tenure choice, using a cross-country comparative approach. ...

Status, Happiness, and Relative Income

The Changing Structure of Wages in the US and Germany: What Explains the Difference?

Wages and Employment in the US and Germany: What Explains the Differences?

Discrimination in Employment in the Federal Republik of Germany

Evolution and Determinants of Rent Burdens in Germany

The affordability of housing has become a major topic of discussion in Germany among both social scientists and the public at large. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we provide rent-income ratios over more than two decades and show how they change with households’ disposable needs-adjusted income. We find a substantial increase in the ratios over the 1990s. In the decade that ...

Welfare States, Social Structure and the Dynamics of Poverty Rates: A Comparative Study of 16 Countries, 1980-2000