Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Beyond the Employment Agency: The Effect of Social Capital on the Duration of Unemployment

This paper relates an individual’s social capital and the length of unemployment spells of the very same individual. For this purpose, we analyze several facets of an agent’s social activities as determinants of her social capital. Social activities lead to social interactions within organizational settings, which build up social capital at the group level. Via social interactions an exchange of knowledge ...

Does Education Affect Attitudes Towards Immigration? Evidence from Germany

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and exploiting the staggered implementation of a compulsory schooling reform in West Germany, this article finds that an additional year of schooling lowers the probability of being very concerned about immigration to Germany by around six percentage points (20 percent). Furthermore, our findings imply significant spillovers from maternal education to ...

Early Career Experiences and Later Career Success: An International Comparison

Early Career Experiences and Later Career Outcomes: Comparing the United States, France, and Germany

This paper explores the links between individuals' early career experiences and their labor market outcomes 5 to 20 years later using data from France, (western) Germany, and the United States. Relative to most of the literature, we consider a large set of measures of men's early career experiences and later career outcomes. Our results differ significantly across countries. Labor market ...

Children’s Sex and the Happiness of Parents

Demographers are interested in sex preferences for children because they can skew sex ratios and influence population-level fertility, parenting behavior, and family outcomes. Based on parity progression ratios, in most European countries, there are no sex preferences for a first child, but a strong preference for mixed-sex children. We hypothesize that mixed-sex preferences also influence parental ...

Parental Well-being Surrounding First Birth as a Determinant of Further Parity Progression

A major component driving cross-country fertility differences in the developed world is differences in the probability of having additional children among those who have one. Why do people stop at having only one child? We hypothesize that the experience of the transition to parenthood is an important determinant of further fertility. Analyzing longitudinal data from Germany, we find that the experience ...

Is There a Fatherhood Wage Premium? A Cautionary Tale from Modified Male-Breadwinner Societies

The transition to parenthood deepens economic inequalities between women and men. In labour markets, motherhood leads to substantial wage penalties for women, whereas the wage progression of men marches on come fatherhood. Yet relatively little evidence exists on whether fatherhood grants men a wage premium or superior wages spur the transition to fatherhood instead. Also, most longitudinal studies ...

Do Parental Leaves Make the Motherhood Wage Penalty Worse?

We assess if and how motherhood wage penalties change in response to the design of parental leave regulations. Focusing on Germany, we compare sweeps of reforms inspired by opposite principles. One allowed for longer periods out of paid work in the 1990s, the other prompted quicker re-entry in the labour market in the late 2000s. These reforms may have first exacerbated and later mitigated wage losses ...

The Relationship between Family Context and Job Satisfaction: A Quantitative Investigation

This thesis provides empirical evidence on the relationship between demographic events and job satisfaction. Existing conceptualisations of job satisfaction are not fruitful for theorising the relationship between family context and job satisfaction. I develop a framework whereby job satisfaction is maximised when there are no mismatches between desired and obtained employment characteristics, while ...

Genetic variants linked to education predict longevity

Educational attainment is associated with many health outcomes, including longevity. It is also known to be substantially heritable. Here, we used data from three large genetic epidemiology cohort studies (Generation Scotland, n = ∼17,000; UK Biobank, n = ∼115,000; and the Estonian Biobank, n = ∼6,000) to test whether education-linked genetic variants can predict lifespan length. We did so by using ...