SOEP-Suche

Individual Differences in Social Comparison and its Consequences for Life Satisfaction: Introducing a Short Scale of the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure

Research in social psychology has shown individual variation in the tendency to compare one’s own opinions and abilities with those of other people, raising the question of whether social comparisons are psychological dispositions. To test the empirical validity of this proposition, Gibbons and Buunk (1999) created an instrument, the Iowa–Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM), that measures ...

Social Comparison Orientations and their Consequences for Justice Perceptions of Earnings

Recently, research on social comparison orientations (SCOs) has shown remarkable inter-individual variation in people’s tendency to compare themselves with others. Whether this variation bears any consequences for social justice research that assumes social comparisons to be a valuable asset in forming images of just earnings is still an unsolved question. This paper takes up this research challenge ...

Measuring Migrants' Educational Attainment: The CAMCES Tool in the IAB-SOEP Migration Samples

Education is one of the most frequently used variables in social science research. However, it is challenging to measure educational attainment with a high degree of validity and comparability in migrant surveys. In migrant surveys, respondents were educated in various different educational systems. Rather than providing specific response options for the qualifications available in every country of ...

Deteriorating health satisfaction among immigrants from Eastern Europe in Germany

Work Out or Out of Work: The Labor Market Return to Physical Fitness and Leisure Sport Activities

This study is the first to present evidence of the return to leisure sports in the job hiring process by sending fictitious applications to real job openings in the Swedish labor market. In the field experiment job applicants were randomly given different information about their type and level of leisure sport being engaged in. Applications which signal sport skills have a significantly higher callback ...

Comparative Overview of Household Definitions Used in Major Household Panel Surveys

Housing Decisions, Family Types and Gender: A Look across LIS Countries

In this paper we shall examine homeownership trends over the past 3 to 4 decades and discuss differences related to the homeownership gap for women and men, with a focus on most recent trends. We shall compare differences in the US to those in countries with different institutional structures and shall pay particular attention to differences across family types. Our estimation techniques will allow ...

Labor Income Risk and Consumption / Saving Behavior (Dissertation)

Income Inequality, Life Satisfaction, and Economic Worries

We analyzed the effect of income inequality on Germans’ life satisfaction considering factors explaining the mechanism of this relationship. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study for the years 1984 to 2012, we found a negative relationship between national-level income disparity and average life satisfaction, meaning that people felt happier in years with lower inequality. The effect ...

Where did all the unemployed go?: Non-standard work in Germany after the Hartz reforms

The number of unemployed workers in Germany decreased dramatically from its peak in February 2005 at over 5.2 million to 3.6 million by 2008. At the same time, employment increased by 1.2 million. Most theoretical and empirical analyses of this episode assume that a worker leaving unemployment moves into full employment. We ask where the unemployed actually went. Using and merging two large micro data ...