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The Formation of Prosociality: Causal Evidence on the Role of Social Environment

This study presents descriptive and causal evidence on the role of social environment for the formation of prosociality. In a first step, we show that socio-economic status (SES) as well as the intensity of mother-child interaction and mothers’ prosocial attitudes are systematically related to elementary school children’s prosociality. In a second step, we present evidence on a randomly assigned variation ...

Impatience among Preschool Children and their Mothers

Using experimental data of children and their mothers, this paper explores the intergenerational relationship of impatience. The child’s impatience stems from a delay of gratification experiment. Mother’s impatience has been assessed by a choice task where the mothers faced trade-offs between a smaller-sooner and a larger-later monetary reward with a delay of six or twelve months. The findings demonstrate ...

Quasi-Hyperbolic Time Preferences and their Intergenerational Transmission

This study explores the intergenerational transmission of time preferences and focuses on the question which specific aspects of mother's time preference are related to her preschool child's ability to delay gratification. We provide a new procedure for assessing the parameters of a "quasi-hyperbolic" discount function (Laibson, 1997) using two trade-off experiments. We apply the ...

Effectiveness of Social Capital in the Job Search Process

The empirical literature has provided ample yet contradictory evidence on the effectiveness of social ties in the job search process in terms of post-hire outcomes, such as wages or job satisfaction. Whereas early research, mainly focussing on the U.S. labour market, found positive correlations between finding a job via social ties and post-hire outcomes, most recent studies reported inconclusive or ...

Large-Scale Immigration and Labour Market Integration: First Lessons from the Recent Past in Germany

In summary, because of their exogenously driven and often non-voluntary migration pace, refugees often face a disadvantageous starting position in a developed destination country with respect to their labour market integration.

Mode of birth and social inequalities in health: The effect of maternal education and access to hospital care on cesarean delivery

Abstract Access to health care is an important factor in explaining health inequalities. This study focuses on the issue of access to health care as a driving force behind the social discrepancies in cesarean delivery using data from 707 newborn children in the 2006–2011 birth cohorts of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Data on individual birth outcomes are linked to hospital data using ...

Parental leave benefits and breastfeeding in Germany: Effects of the 2007 reform

While the health benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and children are well known, breastfeeding may make it difficult for mothers to return early to the labor market. Maternity and parental leave regulations have been designed to reduce this conflict. In 2007, Germany put into effect a new parental leave benefit (Elterngeld). The related reform increased the number of parents eligible for benefits ...

Multi- and Interdisciplinary Analyses Using the SOEP

Do Demographics Prevent Consumer Aggregates from Reflecting Micro-level Preferences?

Most simulated micro-founded macro models use solely consumer-demand aggregates in order to estimate preference parameters of a representative consumer, for use in policy evaluation. Focusing on dynamic models with time-separable preferences, we show that aggregation holds if, and only if, momentary utility functions fall in the Identical-Shape Harmonic Absolute-Risk Aversion (ISHARA) utility class, ...

About time: Daylight Saving Time transition and individual well-being

Daylight Saving Time is controversial due to its alleged negative impact on individual well-being. Using panel data from Germany we find evidence that the transition to summer time has negative influence on general life satisfaction and mood, which is stronger for those in full time employment.