SOEP-RV
Dataset Information
SOEP survey data linked to administrative data of the German Pension Insurance
For SOEP-RV the Research Data Center of the German Pension Insurance (FDZ-RV) cooperates with the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the DIW Berlin (German Institute for Economic Research). It was initially funded by the Forschungsnetzwerk Alterssicherung (FNA). SOEP-RV links SOEP survey data with anonymized, high quality social security data from administrative pension records. The long time frame of the social security data provides unique possibilities for research combining administrative and survey information, such as studies addressing new questions of long-term inequality or policy reform effects. In particular, SOEP-RV offers significant potential for research on pensions and old age, and for research on methodological questions such as the consistency of self-reported versus administrative information. The project has been established on a permanent basis so that we will provide annual (RTBN) and biennial (VSKT) updates of the SOEP-RV data and the efforts to enlarge the sample with every new wave of the SOEP will continue.
A crucial condition for inclusion of SOEP data in SOEP-RV is that record linkage is only carried out with the expressed written consent of the SOEP respondents. A majority of the respondents allow the German pension insurance with an explicit consent to provide information from their pension records. Up to now, about 14,500 SOEP-Core and SOEP-IS respondents have consented to the record linkage.
The Research Data Center of the German Pension Insurance provides complementary longitudinal data in the format of the VSKT, which is generally used for statistical and research purposes, and the RTBN cross-sectional data set for pensioners:
- The data in the format of the VSKT includes demographic variables and some pension-related variable, plus a module on the social income situation. This includes monthly information for socially insured employees and statutory insured pensioners. However, it does not include state employees or the self-employed.
- The RTBN provides information on pensions, including for example when the pension started, the key factors of the pension calculation, and the pension paid.
The data can only be used for research purposes. The data is provided as scientific-use-files in German and English for the software-packages Stata and SPSS. Please note that the administrative records of the German Pension Insurance and the SOEP data must be ordered separately, but the data can easily be linked by the users. For both datasets it is mandatory to fill out an application form and sign a data usage contract with the respective research data center. After this, the data will be made available via download.
An application for the administrative data of the German Pension Insurance can be submitted through FDZ-RV.
Documentation
Lüthen, Holger; Schröder, Carsten; Grabka, Markus M.; Goebel, Jan; Mika, Tatjana; Brüggmann, Daniel; Ellert, Sebastian; Penz, Hannah (2022): SOEP-RV: Linking German Socio-Economic Panel Data to Pension Records. Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 242 (2022), 2, S. 291-307.
Codebooks zu den Datensätzen von SOEP-RV finden sich beim FDZ-RV.
