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Background: The choice between permanent settlement and temporary migration has garnered increased attention in international migration studies, yet the decisions of refugees remain underexplored. Objective: Building on the existing literature on return migration among voluntary migrants, this paper investigates the importance of socio-psychological and economic-skills contexts in refugees’ home and ...
In:
Demographic Research
54 (2026), 16, 481–520
| Andreas Ette, Yuliya Kosyakova, Christian Kothe
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This study investigates the impact of child-related absence from work on the income of working mothers and fathers, addressing a significant research gap in sociology and labour economics. While previous research has established that gender and parenthood significantly influence income levels, the consequences of caring for a sick child-a common and unpredictable responsibility-remain inadequately ...
Berlin:
DIW Berlin; SOEP,
2025,
(SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 1219)
| Ayhan Adams, Katrin Golsch
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How do students’ earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and non-FiF students. Our data can explain two-thirds of this gap, with the largest share attributable to field of study choice. We show that ...
Berlin:
DIW Berlin; SOEP,
2025,
(SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 1221)
| Katharina Adler, Fabian Kosse, Markus Nagler, Johannes Rincke
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We study the effect of finding a job through one's social contact on starting wages. Using combined SOEP-INKAR data for Germany and propensity score analysis - both matching and weighting - we document that referral hiring is associated with a wage penalty of 10%. This penalty is stable over time. Separating by the type of the social contact, we find that referrals from former colleagues are associated ...
Bielefeld:
Bielefeld University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics,
2025,
(Working Papers in Economics and Management No. 1-2025)
| Mariya Afonina, Anna Zaharieva
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This paper investigates whether individuals’ relative (status or positional) concerns are associated with their transitions from paid employment or inactivity to self-employment. The conjecture is that stress and anxiety arising from socio-economic comparisons may be motivating factors for individuals to establish their own businesses. We examine this using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) dataset, ...
In:
Small Business Economics
(online first) (2025),
| Alpaslan Akay, Levent Yilmaz
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Overeducated workers are more productive and have higher wages in comparison to their adequately educated coworkers in the same jobs. However, they have lower wages than their similarly educated peers who are in correctly matched jobs. This study examines the hypotheses that overeducated workers sort into performance pay jobs as an adjustment mechanism and that performance pay enhances their wages. ...
In:
Education Economics
(online first) (2025), 1–21
| Mehrzad B. Baktash
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Transitioning into young adulthood often brings about significant changes in personality traits. However, the reasons behind these personality changes remain unclear. This study integrates insights from research on personality development and the psychology of social class to study how the construction of one’s social class identity in young adulthood might trigger changes in personality traits (i.e., ...
In:
Social Psychological and Personality Science
(online first) (2025),
| Anatolia Batruch, Manon A. van Scheppingen
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Earnings are often top-coded (right-censored) in administrative registers. The censoring threshold in the case of Germany is the limit value for social security contributions, leading to a substantial fraction of censoring: For example, about 1 % of male workers in West Germany are affected, rising to above 30 % for highly educated prime-aged workers. This missing right tail of the earnings distribution ...
In:
Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik
(online first) (2025),
| Mattis Beckmannshagen, Johannes König, Isabella Retter, Christian Schluter, Carsten Schröder, Yogam Tchokni
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The energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the heightened vulnerability of low-income households to rising heating costs, particularly those in energy inefficient buildings. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this study examines the distributional impact of heating costs across income deciles and evaluates the effectiveness of policy interventions. We find ...
Berlin:
DIW Berlin,
2025,
(DIW Discussion Papers No. 2119)
| Sophie M. Behr, Merve Kucuk, Maximilian Longmuir, Karsten Neuhoff
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Commuting is a fundamental aspect of employees’ daily routines and continues to evolve with technological advancements. Yet the effects of commuting on subjective well-being remain insufficiently investigated in the context of expanding digital connectivity. This paper examines the causal effects of changes in commuting distance on subjective well-being in an era of widespread mobile internet availability. ...
München:
CESifo,
2025,
(CESifo Working Paper No. 11784)
| Katharina Bettig, Valentin Lindlacher