Abstract
The Sample of Integrated Welfare Benefit Biographies (SIG) is a new administrative longitudinal microdata set representative of recipients of Germany’s main welfare programme, the Unemployment Benefit II (UB II, Arbeitslosengeld II). The data set contains detailed longitudinal information on welfare receipt and labour market activities, and hence enables researchers to analyse the dynamics of benefit receipt, income and employment. A distinct feature of the SIG is that it provides information not only for individual benefit recipients but also for family members, including children and partners. This is possible because eligibility for UB II benefits depends on the household structure, and it is means-tested on household income. In addition to socio-demographic and regional information, the SIG contains extensive information on the employment biographies of benefit recipients and their household members from the Integrated Employment Biographies (IEB) of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). This allows researchers to examine the interaction between labour market participation and benefit receipt. The SIG is available to researchers at the Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the IAB.
Highlights
1 Introduction Research on the welfare dependence requires a dynamic perspective on welfare benefit receipt
We present a new administrative microdata set on recipients of UB Unemployment benefit II (II) and their families that has recently been made available for researchers by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and the Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the IAB in an anonymised form
The Leistungshistorik Grundsicherung (LHG) file is processed and anonymised at the IAB to make it available to the external research community via the FDZ, as the first purely administrative data set in the context of UB II, namely, the Sample of Integrated Welfare Benefit Biographies (SIG)
Summary
Research on the welfare dependence requires a dynamic perspective on welfare benefit receipt. Large-scale, individual longitudinal administrative data on welfare receipt such as the SIG offer specific advantages over survey data for the empirical analysis of welfare receipt, such as a detailed, continuous measurement of welfare receipt over time, high case numbers and no panel mortality This provides a wide range of possibilities for analysing the dynamic aspects of benefit receipt. The LHG file is processed and anonymised at the IAB to make it available to the external research community via the FDZ, as the first purely administrative data set in the context of UB II, namely, the Sample of Integrated Welfare Benefit Biographies (SIG). Compared to survey data like the Panel Study Labour Market and Social Security (PASS, about 3700 respondents living in UB II households in 2015) or the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP, about 2500 respondents living in UBII households in 2015), this is a relatively large number of observations which increases the statistical power and the possibility to measure effects or carry out analysis for specific subgroups
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