Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Self-esteem across adulthood: the role of resources

It is still not well understood how and why developmental trajectories of self-esteem change, particularly in late life. We investigated the role of resources for self-esteem change across adulthood. In detail, we explored between-person differences in self-esteem levels and change in relation to resources with participants who ranged in age from 17 to 100 years. Study 1 consisted of a cross-sectional ...

The Earnings Function under Test

The Impact of Social Support Networks on Maternal Employment: A Comparison of Western German, Eastern German and Migrant Mothers

Despite numerous advantages of a quick re-entry into the labor market, it is still common for German mothers to interrupt employment for several years after child birth. Lack of adequate child care is mentioned as the number one barrier to maternal employment. Given the shortages in (full-time) public child care in particular for the under-threes, this paper asks whether social support with child care ...

Spatial Mobility, Family Dynamics, and Housing Transitions

This paper summarizes theoretical approaches and empirical research on the links between partnership and family dynamics on the one hand and spatial mobility and housing transitions on the other. Spatial mobility includes residential relocations and commuting. We consider three types of partnerships—living apart together, unmarried and married co-residential unions—and the transitions between them. ...

Impact of Everyday Technology on the Home Environment on Older Adults' Quality of Life

The Space of Economic and Cultural Capital: A Latent Class Analysis for Germany

The aim of this paper is to construct the “space of capital” based on disaggregated measures of capital portfolios and to analyze the dynamics of class mobility over time. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the “social space”, we argue that it is possible to directly assess the structural dimensions of the social space as a space of (economic and cultural) capital, including wealth as an important ...

The effects of time frames on self-report

Background The degree to which episodic and semantic memory processes contribute to retrospective self-reports have been shown to depend on the length of reporting period. Robinson and Clore (2002) argued that when the amount of accessible detail decreases due to longer reporting periods, an episodic retrieval strategy is abandoned in favor of a semantic retrieval strategy. The current study further ...

Empirical Essays on the Long-Term Consequences of Early Infant Conditions for Health, Productivity, and Family Formation

Plenty of evidence shows that living conditions during pregnancy and infancy shape long-term well-being, partly for multiple generations. External changes in the living conditions for children can be found in a unique setting in modern history: the negative consequences of National-Socialism and the Second World War in German territory. I compile a data set which joins individual information on health, ...

Living Conditions and the Mental Health and Well-being of Refugees: Evidence from a Representative German Panel Study

The mental health and well-being of refugees are both prerequisites for and indicators of social integration. Using data from the first wave of a representative prospective panel of refugees living in Germany, we investigated how different living conditions, especially those subject to integration policies, are associated with experienced distress and life satisfaction in newly-arrived adult refugees. ...

Measuring hours worked in Germany – Contents, data and methodological essentials of the IAB working time measurement concept

This article presents the Working Time Measurement Concept of the Institute for Employment Research, which determines the hours worked in Germany and their individual components. The Working Time Measurement Concept is the key data product on working time in Germany and underlies the German national accounts figure on labour input. These statistics on hours worked are essential for a proper analysis ...