Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Estimates of the Tempo-adjusted Total Fertility Rate in Western and Eastern Germany, 1955-2008

In this article we present estimates of the tempo-adjusted total fertility rate in Western and Eastern Germany from 1955 to 2008. Tempo adjustment of the total fertility rate (TFR) requires data on the annual number of births by parity and age of the mother. Since official statistics do not provide such data for West Germany as well as Eastern Germany from 1990 on we used alternative data sources which ...

Total Survey Error for Longitudinal Surveys

Electoral Turnout and State Redistribution: A Cross-National Study of 14 Developed Countries

This study explores the relationship between electoral participation and income redistribution by way of social transfers, using data from the European Social Survey, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Luxembourg Income Study. It extends previous research by measuring the income skew of turnout rather than using average turnout as a proxy for its income bias. We find that a larger income ...

Essays on job search behavior and labor market policies: The role of subjective beliefs, geographical mobility and gender differences

Persistently high unemployment rates are a major threat to the social cohesion in many societies. To moderate the consequences of unemployment industrialized countries spend substantial shares of their GDP on labor market policies, while in recent years there has been a shift from passive measures, such as transfer payments, towards more activating elements which aim to promote the reintegration into ...

The Persistence of the Gender Wage Gap in Germany

The gender wage gap is remarkably persistent in Germany. Additionally it is among the European Member states one of the highest. The paper examines the empirical data which allow analysing the gender wage gap; it discusses the development of the gender pay gap over time, the trends in wage inequality and the incidence of low pay. As institutional factors are of certain importance, the paper describes ...

Family Policies and Single Parent Poverty in 18 OECD Countries, 1978-2008

In this study, we examined to what extent family policies differently affect poverty among single-parent households and two-parent households. We distinguished between reconciliation policies (tested with parental leave and the proportion of unpaid leave) and financial support policies (tested with family allowances). We used data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database, covering 514,019 households ...

The Relation between Religiosity and Muslims' Social Integration: A Two-Wave Study of Recent Immigrants in Three European Countries

Does their degree of religiosity affect how successfully recent Muslim migrants integrate socially into the host society in terms of their social contacts with the majority population and their ethno-religious group? And/or do these co-ethnic and interethnic social contacts affect the religiosity of Muslim migrants over time? On the basis of a two-wave study among recent migrants in Germany, the Netherlands ...

Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill: Latent Class Analyses of Individual Differences in Response to Major Life Events

Theorists have long maintained that people react to major life events but then return to a set-point of subjective well-being. Although evidence now indicates substantial inter-individual variability in these reactions, prior research has been limited by its use of average trajectories. In this study, we used latent growth mixture modeling to identify specific patterns of individual variation in response ...

Ideology, Family Policy and Gender Economic Inequality: Different Models, Different Tradeoffs

Winners and Losers: The Consequences of Welfare State Policies for Gender Wage Inequality

Cross-national studies of the impact of welfare states on gender inequality tend to overlook socioeconomic divisions among women. This paper challenges the implicit assumption that welfare states have uniform effects on the labour market attainments of all women, arguing that the impact of state intervention is necessarily conditioned by women’s relative advantage or disadvantage in the labour market. ...