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Like Brother, Like Sister? - The Importance of Family Background for Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background in skill formation. Sibling correlations are a much broader measure of the impact of family background on children’s outcomes than onedimensional parent-child correlations, which are widely used in the intergenerational mobility literature. Our estimates are based on ...

Cognitive Skills, Non-Cognitive Skills, and Family Background: Evidence from Sibling Correlations

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. Based on a large representative German dataset including IQ test scores and measures of non-cognitive skills, a restricted maximum likelihood model indicates a strong relationship between family background and skill formation. Sibling correlations in non-cognitive ...

Does Future PC Use Determine Our Wages Today? - Evidence from German Panel Data

Using 1985–99 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) we confirm the hypothesis that existing computer wage premiums are determined by ability or other unobserved individual characteristics rather than by productivity effects. In addition to the conventional longitudinal regression analysis, the two competing hypotheses were tested by employing future PC variables in the wage regressions ...

Completing the Bathtub? The Development of Top Incomes in Germany, 1907-2007

This paper examines the evolution of top incomes in Germany from 1907-2007 with a special focus on past decades. A more detailed analysis of German top incomes is conducted, beginning with a review of selected income distribution measures which indicate that high incomes have played a significant role for income divergence in recent years. Based on new data it is shown that top income shares have indeed ...

Poverty Dynamics in Four OECD Countries

This study examines the dynamics of poverty for four OECD countries (Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States). It provides information on patterns of poverty, which groups stay in poverty the longest, and household/individual characteristics and life-course events which appear to be most closely associated with transitions into and out of poverty and the length of time individuals ...

Microeconomic Analysis of the Retirement Decision - Germany

Rising Wage Inequality, the Decline of Collective Bargaining, and the Gender Wage Gap

This paper investigates the increase in wage inequality, the decline in collective bargaining, and the development of the gender wage gap in West Germany between 2001 and 2006. Based on detailed linked employer-employee data, we show that wage inequality is rising strongly – driven not only by real wage increases at the top of the wage distribution, but also by real wage losses below the median. Coverage ...

Do Social Relationships Buffer the Effects of Widowhood? A Prospective Study of Adaptation to the Loss of a Spouse

The idea that strong social relationships can buffer the negative effects of stress on well-being has received much attention in existing literature. However, previous studies have used less than ideal research designs to test this hypothesis, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding the buffering effects of social support. In this study, we examined the buffering hypothesis in the context ...

The Validity of the Day Reconstruction Method in the German Socio-economic Panel Study

The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) is a useful tool for evaluating short-term changes in emotional experiences over a variety of daily situations. However, traditional method of collecting DRM data can be time-intensive for both researchers and participants. In this paper we provide evidence that a random-sampling approach to DRM assessment can provide useful data that are largely consistent with ...

Stability and Change of Personality Traits, Self-Esteem, and Well-Being: Introducing the Meta-Analytic Stability and Change Model of Retest Correlations

The stability of individual differences is a fundamental issue in personality psychology. Although accumulating evidence suggests that many psychological attributes are both stable and change over time, existing research rarely takes advantage of theoretical models that capture both stability and change. In this article, we present the Meta-Analytic Stability and Change model (MASC), a novel meta-analytic ...