SOEP-Suche

Do second-generation Turkish migrants in Germany assimilate into the middle class?

The understanding of career paths of migrants is crucial for gaining deeper insights into assimilation processes. However, previous studies in Germany have paid little attention to middle-class assimilation and the career sequences of the second generation of migrants. This paper focuses on early employment career patterns of the children of guest workers, both men and women and especially those of ...

A Risk Augmented Mincer Earnings Equation? Taking Stock

We survey the literature on the Risk Augmented Mincer equation that seeks to estimate the compensation for uncertainty in the future wage to be earned after completing an education. There is wide empirical support for the predicted positive effect of wage variance and the negative effect of wage skew. We discuss robustness of the findings across specifications, potential bias from unobserved heterogeneity ...

Risk compensation on wages - a replication

We use data from Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain to test for the effect of earnings variation on individual earnings. We replicate estimates for the USA and find that the variance of earnings in an occupation affects individual wages positively while the skewness of earnings has a negative effect. Both results are in conformity with wage compensation for risk averse workers.

Are Happier People Better Citizens?

This paper offers new findings which support the hypothesis that a causal link from happiness to social capital might exist. The paper exploits the very long German socio-economic panel of around 15000 people. Using the prospective study methodology, it finds that happier people contribute more to social capital. Both parametric and nonparametric results suggest that there exists an inverted-U shape ...

Why is the world getting older? The influence of happiness on mortality

World life expectancy has risen by around 20 years in the last 50 years. This period has also witnessed rising happiness levels around the world suggesting that happiness might be one of the causes behind the decline in mortality. We investigate the relationship between happiness and mortality using the German Socio-Economic Panel. We consider doctor visits, self-reported health, and presence of chronic ...

Life Satisfaction and Longevity: Longitudinal Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

We investigate the relationship between life satisfaction and mortality using the German Socio-Economic Panel, which allows us to follow around 15,000 people for more than two decades. Seventeen per cent of the respondents surveyed in 1984 died between 1984 and 2007. After controlling for initial health conditions, we find that people's life satisfaction at the beginning of the survey is deeply ...

You Can’t Be Happier than Your Wife: Happiness Gaps and Divorce

Based on three large panel surveys, this paper shows that happiness gaps between spouses are a good predictor of future divorce. The effect of happiness gaps is asymmetric: couples are more likely to break-up when the woman is the less happy partner. De facto, divorces appear to be initiated predominantly by women who are less happy than their husband. This asymmetry suggests that the effect of happiness ...

Ageing, Health and Life Satisfaction of the Oldest Old: An Analysis for Germany

This analysis uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to assess the effect of ageing and health on the life satisfaction of the oldest old (defined as 75 and older). We observe a U-shaped relationship between age and levels of life satisfaction for individuals aged between 16 and approximately 65. Thereafter, life satisfaction ...

Discrete Choice Labor Supply: Conditional Logit vs. Random Coefficient Models

Estimating labor supply functions using a discrete rather than a continuous specification has become increasingly popular in recent years. On basis of the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) I test which specification of discrete choice is the appropriate model for estimating labor supply: the standard conditional logit model or the random coefficient model. To the extent that effect heterogeneity is ...

State Dependence and Female Labor Supply in Germany: The Extensive and Intensive Margin