Abstract
Abstract The aim of the project SOEP-RV is to link data from participants in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) survey to their individual Deutsche Rentenversicherung (German Pension Insurance) records. For all SOEP respondents who give explicit consent to record linkage, SOEP-RV creates a linked dataset that combines the comprehensive multi-topic SOEP data with detailed cross-sectional and longitudinal data on social security pension records covering the individual’s entire insurance history. This article provides an overview of the record linkage project, highlights potentials for analysis of the linked data, compares key SOEP and pension insurance variables, and suggests a re-weighting procedure that corrects for selectivity. It concludes with details on the process of obtaining the data for scientific use.
Highlights
Record linkage is a method for precisely matching microdata from different sources with the goal of expanding the potential of the data for research (e.g., Schnell 2014)
This article provides an overview of the record linkage project, highlights potentials for analysis of the linked data, compares key Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and pension insurance variables, and suggests a re-weighting procedure that corrects for selectivity
This paper describes the data linkage project SOEP-RV, which is being conducted by the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) in partnership with the Research Data Centre of the German Pension Insurance (FDZ-RV)
Summary
Record linkage is a method for precisely matching microdata from different sources with the goal of expanding the potential of the data for research (e.g., Schnell 2014). The pension records add biographical social security information starting earliest at the age of 14 for all SOEP respondents, including those who are new to the SOEP. SOEP-RV expands the potential for research with the administrative data: The individual-level information in the administrative data complements the SOEP’s detailed information on family and household relationships. SOEP-RV is especially useful for describing and explaining the employment, pension, and income biographies of individuals and households It allows the quantification of (lifetime) income—at the individual and household level—while taking into account earned and pension income as well as other types of income, including capital income and government benefits, without the need to rely on strong modelling assumptions. Analogous possibilities arise for the measurement of wealth according to asset types, including pension entitlements, as well as debts
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