Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Motherhood, labor force behavior, and women's careers: an empirical assessment of the wage penalty for motherhood in Britain, Germany, and the United States

Using harmonized longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we trace career prospects after motherhood for five cohorts of American, British, and West German women around the 1960s. We establish wage penalties for motherhood between 9% and 18% per child, with wage losses among American ...

Development of Family Income since the 1990s: A Fresh Look at German Microdata Using Income-Dependent Equivalence Scales

Income inequality and poverty risks receive a lot of attention in public debates and current research. However, the situation of families that differ in size and composition is rarely considered more closely in this context. Relevant research typically relies on equivalence scales to make income comparable across different types of households. The standard approach for doing so is based on the so-called ...

Intra-Household Time Allocation: Gender Differences in Caring for Children

This paper analyses the intra-household allocation of time to show gender differences in childcare. In the framework of a general efficiency approach, hours spent on childcare by each parent are regressed against individual and household characteristics, for five samples (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain), with data being drawn from the European Community Household Panel-ECHP (1994-2001). ...

With Strings Attached: Grandparent-Provided Child Care and Female Labor Market Outcomes

Grandparents are regular providers of free child care. Similar to other forms of child care, availability of grandparent-provided child care affects fertility and labor force participation of women positively. However, grandparent-provided child care requires residing close to parents or in-laws which may imply costly spatial restrictions. We find that mothers residing close to parents or in-laws ...

Welfare State Expenditures and the Distribution of Child Opportunities

Simultaneity bias in the analysis of perceived job insecurity and subjective well-being

The paper assesses perceived job insecurity as a determinant of current subjective well-being and demonstrates that standard models may yield significantly downward biased estimates.

Winners and Losers: Fragmentation, Trade and Wages Revisited

Do unskilled workers always lose from fragmentation?

Winners and losers: a micro-level analysis of international outsourcing and wages

Do Labour Market Institutions Matter? Micro-Level Wage Effects of International Outsourcing in Three European Countries

This paper studies the impact of outsourcing on individual wages in three European countries with markedly different labour market institutions: Germany, the UK and Denmark. To do so we use individual-level data sets for the three countries and construct comparable measures of outsourcing at the industry level, distinguishing outsourcing by broad region. We discuss some possible intuitive reasons for ...