Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

In 2016, around One-Third of People in Germany Donated for Refugees and Ten Percent Helped out on Site—yet Concerns Are Mounting

The presence of refugees in Germany and the challenges their integration poses have preoccupied the public for the past two years. According to the latest data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), many more people in Germany were concerned about migration and xenophobia last year than in 2013. The additional representative results of the Barometer of Public Opinion on Refugees in Germany in 2016 and ...

Direct Evidence on Risk Attitudes and Migration

It has long been hypothesized that individuals' migration propensities depend on their risk attitudes, but the empirical evidence has been limited and indirect. We use newly available data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure directly the relationship between migration and risk attitudes. We find that individuals who are more willing to take risks are more likely to migrate. Our estimates ...

Gender Differences in Life Satisfaction and Social Participation

This paper deals with the effects of social participation activities on life satisfaction. Using the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) for 2010, I present gender specific differences for several social activities, such as club memberships of political, welfare, health or more leisure time orientated groups. These activities have different impacts on male or female satisfaction. While sports and ...

The kids are alright? A note on parental satisfaction in Germany

In social sciences, research of satisfaction presents mixed or negative effects of parental satisfaction (e.g. Powdthavee 2009, Hansen 2012), while recent findings show that socio-economic differences matter (e.g. Myrskylä/Margolis 2014, Pollmann-Schult, 2014). Here, we use long run German panel data with fixed effects regressions and interaction terms to analyze the effects of birth on parental satisfaction. ...

The Attitudes Towards the Euro: An Empirical Study based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Risky Business - The Role of Individual Risk Attitudes in Occupational Choice

This study analyzes the relationship of individual risk attitudes and occupational sorting with respect to occupational earnings risk. By using the German Mikrozensus, a precise measure for earnings risk is computed as the occupation-wide standard deviation of wages. Following the procedure proposed by Bonin (2007), this earnings risk measure is used as dependent variable in cross-sectional and panel ...

The Cost of Babylon - Linguistic Distance in Applied Economics

Linguistic distance, i.e. the dissimilarity between languages, is an important factor influencing international economic transactions such as migration or international trade flows by imposing hurdles for second language acquisition and increasing transaction costs. To measure these costs, we suggest using a new measure of linguistic distance. The Levenshtein distance is an easily computed and transparent ...

Linguistic barriers in the destination language acquisition of immigrants

There are various degrees of similarity between the languages of different immigrants and the language of their destination country. This linguistic distance is an obstacle to the acquisition of a language, which leads to large differences in the attainments of the language skills necessary for economic and social integration in the destination country. This study aims at quantifying the influence ...

Increasing uncertainty in old age in Germany? The development of social inequality in later life since the mid-1980s

The Causes of Seam Effects in Panel Surveys