The Socio-Economic Module of the Berlin Aging Study II (SOEP-BASE): Description, Structure, and Questionnaire

Abstract

The Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) is a multidisciplinary study that allows for the investigation of how a multitude of health status factors as well as many other social and economic outcomes interplay. The sample consists of 1,600 participants aged 60 to 80, and 600 participants aged 20 to 35. The socio-economic part of BASE-II, the so called SOEP-BASE, is conducted by the SOEP Group at the DIW Berlin. The surveyed socio-economic variables are fully comparable with the variables of the long running German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), which increases the analytical power of BASE-II. The socio-economic data collected on the individual and on the household level are enriched with geo-referenced context data (“neighbourhood data”) in order to disentangle the interplay between individual, societal and regional determinants on individuals’ health status and other outcome variables. Furthermore, as the BASE-II study is based on a convenience sample, the SOEP Group at the DIW provides weights for the BASE-II dataset that correct for selectivity bias.