Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Formation of College Plans: Expected Returns, Preferences and Adjustment Process

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the determinants of college attendance and the role played by one's environment. We analyze whether, and how quickly, adolescents' college plans are adapted, explore factors leading to the adjustment, and examine how these factors ultimately impact later educational attainment. Using differences across East German cohorts induced by the timing of ...

On the Right Track? – The Role of Work Experience in Migrant Mothers’ Current Employment Probability

This paper investigates the role of work experience in migrant mothers’ current employment in Germany. Unlike previous papers, we focus on actual experience and add the motherhood aspect. To this end, we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel 2013-2018 including the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample. Having immigrated to Germany and female sex are the two treatments of our sample of 491 migrant mothers, ...

Nonparametric Welfare Analysis for Discrete Choice: Levels and Differences of Individual and Social Welfare

Empirical welfare analyses often impose stringent parametric assumptions on individuals’ preferences and neglect unobserved preference heterogeneity. In this paper, we develop a framework to conduct individual and social welfare analysis for discrete choice that does not suffer from these drawbacks. We first adapt the broad class of individual welfare measures introduced by Fleurbaey (2009) to settings ...

The Fall in Income Inequality during COVID-19 in Four European Countries

We here use panel data from the COME-HERE survey to track income inequality during COVID-19 in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Relative inequality in equivalent household disposable income among individuals changed in a hump-shaped way between January 2020 and January 2021, with an initial rise from January to May 2020 being more than reversed by September 2020. Absolute inequality also fell over ...

Pension Wealth and the Gender Wealth Gap

We examine the gender wealth gap with a focus on pension wealth and statutory pension rights. By taking into account employment characteristics of women and men, we are able to identify the extent to which the redistributive effect of pension rights reduces the gender wealth gap. The data for our analysis come from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), one of the few surveys that collects information ...

Emigration, Friends, and Social Integration: The Determinants and Development of Friendship Network Size After Arrival (Chapter 14)

Friendships can be interpreted as voluntary relationships between individuals and characterised as relatively amorphous bond. Since migration usually diversifies people’s social bonds, it can be suggested that in this context friendships have to be reconfigured. Even though friendships are important for societal integration and related to individual well-being, migration research has treated friendships ...

Five Years Later, One Million Refugees Are Thriving in Germany

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 data set, I identify happiness, anger, and fear as signi<U+FB01>cant correlates of within-person changes in risk attitudes. Robustness ...

Generation Y: Do millennials need a partner to be happy?

Introduction: Empirical evidence on Ronald Inglehart's theory of value change shows that subsequent generations show a decline in values of physical and economic security (materialism) in favor of an increase in values of self-expression and autonomy (postmaterialism). Methods: We investigate in a pre-registered study whether Inglehart's theory also applies to partnership, such that millennials ...

The Economic Implications of Migration

Diese Dissertation besteht aus vier empirischen Kapiteln aus dem Bereich der Migrationsökonomik. Kapitel 1 untersucht die Auswirkungen von Aufenthaltsbeschränkungen auf die Teilnahme an Integrationskursen und auf die Sprachentwicklung von Geflüchteten. Ein neu eingeführtes Gesetz, die "Wohnsitzauflage", beschränkt Geflüchtete mit einem längerfristigen Aufenthaltsstatus in der Wahl ihres ersten ...