Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Causal effects on employment after first birth - A dynamic treatment approach

The effects of childbirth on future labor market outcomes are a key issue for policy discussion. This paper implements a dynamic treatment approach to estimate the effect of having the first child now versus later on future employment for the case of Germany, a country with a long maternity leave coverage. Effect heterogeneity is assessed by estimating ex post outcome regressions. Based on SOEP data, ...

Volunteering after retirement. Evidence from German panel data

In view of the steady growth in life expectancy in recent decades the question is increasingly being raised whether and how older people should be encouraged to be more active, and particularly to engage in unpaid voluntary work. Taking adult life as a whole the conditions for such charitable involvement would appear to be especially favourable after retirement. However, these analyses, which are based ...

Nowhere Better Than Here? The Subjective Well-Being of German Emigrants and Remigrants

Anticipation of Life Satisfaction Before Emigration: Evidence from German Panel Data

Sociological as well as economic research stresses the impact of so called ‘push and pull factors’ on individual migration decisions. These push and pull factors are often understood as a combination of individual socio-economic and socio-demographic determinants and institutional contexts in home and (possible) destination countries. However, within this framework there is only little research on ...

Migration, social stratification and dynamic effects on subjective well being

Using German panel data and relying on internal relocation, this paper investigates the anticipation and adaptation of subjective well-being (SWB) in the course of migration. We hypothesize that SWB correlates with the process of migration, and that such correlations are at least partly socially stratified. Our fixed-effects regressions show no evidence of any anticipation of SWB before the event of ...

How to measure job stability - A comparison of two measurement concepts (Chapter XI)

Income Mobility and the Welfare State: An International Comparison with Panel Data

This article examines gross and net equivalent income mobility in the western and eastern states of Germany, in Great Britain and in the United States, using panel data of these countries from the period 1989–95. By comparing the differences between the mobility of gross and net equivalent income internationally, it analyses to what extent the welfare state reduces income mobility, thereby testing ...

Labor Income Mobility - Germany, the USA and Great Britain Compared

Migration, Friendship Ties and Cultural Assimiliation

We study immigrant assimilation by analyzing whether friendship with natives is a measure of cultural assimilation, and by investigating the formation of social ties. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel, we find that immigrants with a German friend are more similar to natives than those without German friends, along several important dimensions, including concerns about the economy, an interest in ...

The Decomposition of Well-Being Categories - An Application to Germany

In the paper, a combined approach is used to test for inequality differences of several well-being categories for a number of groups of persons. Hereby, total inequality is decomposed into within- and into between-group/category inequality (via a normalised coefficient of variation as the used inequality indicator). The decompositions are categorised into those referring to socio-demographic characteristics ...