Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Determinants of Population Self-Control

This paper demonstrates that structural factors can shape people's self-control. We study the determinants of adult self-control using population-representative data and exploiting two sources of quasi-experimental variation-Germany's division and compulsory schooling reforms. We find that former East Germans have substantially higher levels of self-control than West Germans and provide evidence ...

Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Benefit Receipt: Evidence from Germany

We study the intergenerational transmission of welfare receipt in Germany. We first describe the correlation of welfare receipt experienced in the parental household and subsequent own welfare receipt of young adults. In a second step, we investigate whether the observed correlations reflect causal effects using the Gottschalk (1996) approach and a family fixed effects estimation. We take advantage ...

Mortality, severe disability and long-term care in Germany: recent trends, differences and determinants

For better or for worse mental health? The role of family networks in exogamous unions

This study tests whether being in an exogamous union affects older individual's family networks, and whether associations between exogamy and mental health reported in previous studies operate through changes in family ties and differ by gender. We focus on individuals aged 60 or above in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study between 2002 and 2016. We describe demographic and family characteristics ...

Emotions and Risk Attitudes

Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people's emotions over time predicts changes in risk attitudes. Using a large-panel dataset, I identify happiness, anger, and fear as significant correlates of within-person changes in risk attitudes. Robustness checks ...

Social Inequalities―Empirical Focus

Social inequalities constitute one of the largest research fields of sociology in the German-speaking countries. This field has been successfully institutionalized and internationalized in recent decades. Today, it rests on a rich data infrastructure and a large body of cumulative research. The article traces this advancement in terms of shifting theoretical paradigms, methodological innovations, and ...

Germany’s low SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence confirms effective containment in 2020: Results of the nationwide RKI-SOEP study

Pre-vaccine SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence data from Germany are scarce outside hotspots, and socioeconomic disparities remained largely unexplored. The nationwide RKI-SOEP study with 15,122 adult participants investigated seroprevalence and testing in a supplementary wave of the Socio-Economic-Panel conducted predominantly in October-November 2020. Self-collected oral-nasal swabs were PCR-positive in 0.4% ...

Statutory Pension Insurance Accounts and Divorce: A New Scientific Use File

Parental Separation and the Formation of Economic Preferences

We estimate the effect of parental separation on the risk and trust attitudes of German adolescents using a large household survey dataset, which allows us to match respondents to their siblings and parents. Our results indicate that adolescents from separated families are less trusting but have the same risk tolerance as adolescents from non-separated families, even after conditioning on the attitudes ...

Can Schools Change Religious Attitudes? Evidence from German State Reforms of Compulsory Religious Education

We study whether compulsory religious education in schools affects students' religiosity as adults. We exploit the staggered termination of compulsory religious education across German states in models with state and cohort fixed effects. Using three different datasets, we find that abolishing compulsory religious education significantly reduced religiosity of affected students in adulthood. It ...