Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Income Inequality and Health: A Cross-Country Analysis

International Migration as Occupational Mobility: The Case of Germany

We investigate whether Germans immigrants to the US work in higher-status occupations than they would have had they remained in Germany. We account for potential bias from selective migration. The probability of migration is identified using life-cycle and cohort variation in economic conditions in the US. We also explore whether occupational choices vary for Germans who migrated as children or as ...

The Value Added of Biomarkers in Household Panel Studies

Process of transition from school-to-work: generator for the initial stage of path dependence in career development

Parental Unemployment and the Transition into Tertiary Education: Can Institutions Moderate the Adverse Effects?

This paper examines how parental unemployment affects the transition to postsecondary education in different institutional contexts. Drawing on theoretical perspectives in intergenerational mobility research and sociology of higher education, we estimate the extent to which these intergenerational effects depend on social and education policies. We use data from five longitudinal surveys to analyze ...

The Intergenerational Effects of Unemployment: How Parental Unemployment Affects Educational Transitions in Germany

This paper studies the intergenerational effects of parental unemployment on students’ transitions after completing upper secondary education. Besides estimating the average treatment effect of parental unemployment on transition outcomes, we also aim to identify the economic, psychological or other intra-familial mechanisms that might be responsible for any adverse impact of parental unemployment ...

Data Sharing as a Social Dilemma: Influence of the Researcher's Personality

It is widely acknowledged that data sharing has great potential for scientific progress. However, so far making data available has little impact on a researcher’s reputation. Thus, data sharing can be conceptualized as a social dilemma. In the presented study we investigated the influence of the researcher's personality within the social dilemma of data sharing. The theoretical background was ...

Undoing Gender with Institutions. Lessons from the German Division and Reunification

Using the 41-year division of Germany as a natural experiment, we show that the GDR’s gender-equal institutions created a culture that has undone the male breadwinner norm and its consequences. Since reunification, East Germany still differs from West Germany not only by a higher female contribution to household income, but also because East German women can earn more than their husbands without having ...

Math, Girls and Socialism

This paper argues that the socialist episode in East Germany, which constituted a radical experiment in gender equality in the labor market and other instances, has left persistent tracks on gender norms. We focus on one of the most resilient and pervasive gender gaps in modern societies: mathematics. Using the German division as a natural experiment, we show that the underperformance of girls in math ...

Attrition of Households and Individuals in Panel Surveys

Attrition is mostly caused by not contacted or refusing sample members. On one hand it is well-known that reasons to attrite due to non-contact are different from those that are due to refusal. On the other hand does non-contact most probably affect household attrition, while refusal can be effective on both households and individuals. In this article, attrition on both the household and (conditional ...