Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Housework, Money, and Marriage

The sharing of public goods and services is one of the most important gains associated with forming a household, even exceeding the efficiency gains from specialization. Most of household public goods are produced using spouses's time, with men devoting about more than one hour per week to home labor and women spending about three hours. We use evidence from a variety of time-use surveys for a ...

Creating low skilled jobs by subsidising market-contracted household work

Comparing the Determinants of Concern about Terrorism and Crime

Both crime and terrorism impose costs onto society through the channels of fear and worry. Identifying and targeting groups which are especially affected by worries might be one way to reduce the total costs of these two types of insecurity. However, compared to the drivers of the fear of crime, the determinants of concerns regarding global terrorism are less well known. Using nationally representative ...

20 Years of German Unification - Evidence of Income Convergence and Heterogeneity

We analyse the convergence and heterogeneity of living standards between East and West Germany since unification. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we compare total individual income of permanent adult residents, including retirees and the unemployed, of East and West Germany over the fifteen years for which data are available. Using a fixed effects vector decomposition method, ...

Can International Migration Solve the Problems of European Labour Markets? (Chapter 5)

Language Skills and Employment Rate of Refugees in Germany Improving with Time

Asylum seekers migrating to Germany remains a hotly debated topic. The second wave of a longitudinal survey of refugees shows that their integration has progressed significantly, even though some refugees came to Germany in poor health and with little formal education. Compared to the previous year, refugees’ German skills have improved, as have their participation rates in the workforce, education, ...

Economic consequences of immigration in Europe

Occupational Recognition and Immigrant Labor Market Outcomes

In this paper, we analyze how the formal recognition of immigrants' foreign occupational qualifications afects their subsequent labor market outcomes. The empirical analysis is based on a novel German data set that links respondents' survey information to their administrative records, allowing us to observe immigrants at monthly intervals before, during and after their application for occupational ...

Migration and Imperfect Labor Markets: Theory and Cross-Country Evidence from Denmark, Germany and the UK

We investigate the labor market effects of immigration in Denmark, Germany and the UK, three countries which are characterized by considerable differences in labor market institutions and welfare states. Institutions such as collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection and unemployment benefits affect the way in which wages respond to labor supply shocks, and, hence, the labor market ...

Migration and Wage Setting: Reassessing the Labor Effects of Migration

This paper employs a wage-setting approach to analyze the labor market effects of immigration into Germany. The wage-setting framework relies on the assumption that wages tend to decline with the unemployment rate, albeit imperfectly. This enables us to consider labor market rigidities, which are particularly relevant in Europe. We find that the elasticity of the wage-setting curve is particularly ...