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The Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) and its Member Country Household Panel Studies

Age, Life-Satisfaction, and Relative Income: Insights from the UK and Germany

We first confirm previous results with the German Socio-Economic Panel by Layard et al. (2010), and obtain strong negative effects of comparison income. However, when we split the sample by age, we find quite different results for reference income. The effects on lifesatisfaction are positive and significant for those under 45, consistent with Hirschman’s (1973) ‘tunnel effect’, and only negative (and ...

So Far so Good: Age, Happiness, and Relative Income

In a simple 2-period model of relative income under uncertainty, higher comparison income for the younger cohort can signal higher or lower expected lifetime relative income, and hence either increase or decrease well-being. With data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Survey, we first confirm the standard negative effects of comparison income on life satisfaction ...

Testing the tunnel effect: comparison, age and happiness in UK and German panels

In contrast to previous results combining all ages we find positive effects of comparison income on happiness for the under 45s, and negative effects for those over 45. In the BHPS these coefficients are several times the magnitude of own income effects. In GSOEP they cancel to give no effect of effect of comparison income on life satisfaction in the whole sample, when controlling for fixed effects, ...

Testing for State Dependence Effects in a Dynamic Model of Male Unemployment Behaviour

Migrants in Germany: The Role of Intergenerational Relations in Economic Integration and Labor Market Effects (Dissertation)

Gender Differences in the Earnings Mobility of Migrants

This study analyzes gender differences in the intergenerational earnings mobility of second-generation migrants in Germany. The analysis takes into account potential influences like assortative mating in the form of ethnic marriages and the parental integration measured by parents’ years since migration. First, intergenerational earnings elasticities are estimated at the mean and along the earnings ...

Do More of Those in Misery Suffer from Poverty, Unemployment or Mental Illness?

Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life-satisfaction suffer from unemployment, poverty, physical ill health, and mental illness. The largest proportion suffers from mental illness. Multiple regression shows that mental illness ...

Ex Post Inequality of Opportunity Comparisons

In this paper we propose different criteria to rank income distributions according to equality of opportunity. Different from existing ones, our criteria explicitly recognize the interplay between circumstances and effort. We characterize them axiomatically and we compare them with existing criteria; then we propose some scalar measures. We show that our ex post criteria are mostly obtained from "seemingly" ...

Social Comparison Affects Reward-Related Brain Activity in the Human Ventral Striatum (supporting online material)