Editorial – SOEP 2012: The 10th International Socio-Economic Panel User Conference

Abstract

The tenth anniversary SOEP conference took place in June 2012. Once again, the International Socio-Economic Panel User Conference attracted great interest in the SOEP scientific community and was a great success. In summer 2012, we welcomed over 160 participants from 10 countries to the conference, and we were delighted that these included the first-ever delegation of researchers from Japan. Over two days, we had exciting discussions of 66 papers and 15 posters by economists, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, geographers, and survey methodologists covering a wide range of research topics such as income inequality, well-being and happiness, social mobility, health and family issues, and intergenerational research. The Conference Program Committee, consisting of Janet Gornick, C. Katharina Spiess, Nicolas Ziebarth, and Jurgen Schupp, were responsible for selection and planning of the anniversary program. Many of the papers at this year’s conference dealt with the distribution of social resources and its trends, causes, and consequences – a core interest shared by a large number of SOEP researchers. Some of these papers addressed specific questions of access to education and jobs, changes in upward social mobility, but also effects of unemployment and downward social mobility.