Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

A step in a new direction? The effect of the parent’s money reform of 2007 on employment rates of mothers in Germany

Increasing maternal employment rates engage policies and people for decades. It is pushed but also questioned at the same time depending on whether women are regarded in first line as mothers or workers. In Germany, the male breadwinner model is traditionally favored. The parent’s money reform of 2007 is regarded as a first step towards the dual earner – dual carer model by some scholars. Compared ...

Institutions, culture and migrants’ preference for state-provided welfare. Longitudinal evidence from Germany

Using the difference-in-differences estimator and data provided by the German Socio-Economic Panel, this article explores migrants’ preferences for state-provided welfare. The study finds evidence that over time, the preferences of immigrants and natives become more similar. We interpret this finding as evidence that the culture of home countries does not have a time-invariant effect, and that immigrants’ ...

Hundred days of cognitive training enhance broad cognitive abilities in adulthood: findings from the COGITO study

We examined whether positive transfer of cognitive training, which so far has been observed for individual tests only, also generalizes to cognitive abilities, thereby carrying greater promise for improving everyday intellectual competence in adulthood and old age. In the COGITO Study, 101 younger and 103 older adults practiced six tests of perceptual speed (PS), three tests of working memory (WM), ...

Keeping It Steady: Older Adults Perform More Consistently on Cognitive Tasks Than Younger Adults

People often attribute poor performance to having bad days. Given that cognitive aging leads to lower average levels of performance and more moment-to-moment variability, one might expect that older adults should show greater day-to-day variability and be more likely to experience bad days than younger adults. However, both researchers and ordinary people typically sample only one performance per day ...

The Effects of Labour Market Participation on Fertility Decisions: Gender Differences in Cross-National Perspective (Dissertation)

Gender-Specific Effects of Unemployment on Family Formation: A Cross-National Perspective

The Impact of Labour Market Integration on Fertility Decisions - A Comparison of Germany and the UK

Increasing childlessness in Germany

Labor Market Integration and the Transition to Parenthood - A Comparison of Germany and the UK

A Cross-National Perspective on Unemployment and First Births

This article investigates the impact of unemployment on the likelihood of having a first child. Using micro-data from the European Community Household Panel, I apply event history methods to analyze first-birth decisions in France, West Germany, and the UK (1994–2001). The results highlight weak negative effects of unemployment on family formation among men, which can be attributed to the inability ...