Socio-Economic Panel Research Articles

Health Benefits of Education: Comparative Evidence from Vietnam and Thailand

Understanding the health benefits of education is vital in setting policy priorities, especially in lower-income countries. Using the instrumental variable with panel data estimation approach, this study utilizes data from the Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel to provide comparative evidence of the health benefits of education in two countries. The findings indicate that highly educated people are likely to report better current health status, reduced probability of having serious diseases in both countries, increased body mass index (BMI) in Vietnam and decreased BMI in Thailand. Additionally, the benefits of education on health are significant among Vietnamese men, Thai women, and Vietnamese ethnic minorities. The results also suggest that the positive effect of education on health can be explained by higher household income. Thus, promoting education among vulnerable groups, including women and ethnic minorities, should be particularly prioritized to mitigate the gaps in health inequities.

Does living in districts with higher levels of ethnic violence affect refugees’ attitudes towards the host country? Empirical evidence from Germany

ABSTRACT While there are many quantitative studies examining the determinants of ethnic violence from the perspective of offenders, less is known about the effects of violence on the victims or target groups. In light of the increased refugee migration in Germany in 2015/2016, we provide empirical evidence that living in districts with a past of ethnic violence against refugees affects refugees’ perception of the host country negatively. We are using survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel which we matched with data on ethnic violence. Albeit refugees had positive attitudes towards Germany – they felt overwhelmingly welcome, safe, and were barely worried about xenophobia – they were considerably less likely to feel this positive in districts with a high accumulated share of arson attacks on refugee homes. As living in contexts with higher levels of past and present ethnic violence can influence refugees’ attitudes, this has implications for integration processes.

Using machine learning to uncover the relation between age and life satisfaction

This study applies a machine learning (ML) approach to around 400,000 observations from the German Socio-Economic Panel to assess the relation between life satisfaction and age. We show that with our ML-based approach it is possible to isolate the effect of age on life satisfaction across the lifecycle without explicitly parameterizing the complex relationship between age and other covariates—this complex relation is taken into account by a feedforward neural network. Our results show a clear U-shape relation between age and life satisfaction across the lifespan, with a minimum at around 50 years of age.

Experienced Well-Being and Labor Market Status: The Role of Pleasure and Meaning

This paper examines the experienced well-being of employed and unemployed workers. We use the survey-adapted Day Reconstruction Method of the Innovation Sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study to analyze the role of the employment status for well-being, incorporating time use. We use the novel P-index to summarize the average share of pleasurable minutes on a day and show that in contrast to evaluative life satisfaction the unemployed experiences more pleasurable minutes due to the absence of working episodes. Hence, we examine working episodes in depth. While working is among the activities with the highest propensities for an unpleasant experience, it is also among the most meaningful activities. We show that meaning is a central non-monetary determinant for pleasure at work and find that pleasure during work and job satisfaction have a comparable association with meaning.

Downward educational mobility and the life satisfaction of adolescents and parents

AbstractObjectiveThis study examines whether parental and adolescent life satisfaction is lower when adolescents are on a lower educational trajectory than their parents, and whether this association is mediated by the quality of the parent–adolescent relationship.BackgroundExisting literature shows that families seek to ensure status maintenance and to avoid downward educational mobility in their children. Little is known, however, about whether downward educational mobility has negative consequences for adolescents' and their parents' well‐being.MethodUsing data on 3781 16‐year‐old adolescents and their parents from the German Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP), this study examined associations between downward educational mobility, parent–adolescent relationship quality, and the life satisfaction of adolescents and their parents.ResultsIn families with two college‐educated parents, risks of downward educational mobility were associated with increased parent–child conflicts and quarrels over school issues as well as with lower life satisfaction in parents and adolescents.ConclusionAdolescents and parents report reduced levels of life satisfaction when adolescents are on a lower educational trajectory than their parents, probably because the risk of declining status across generations negatively affects the psychological well‐being of parents and adolescents.ImplicationsProviders of family services should consider that the psychological effects of low educational achievement in adolescents vary depending on parental levels of education.

The Value of Foreign Language Skills in the German Labor Market

This article explores the relationship between foreign language skills and individuals’ labor income in Germany, focusing on the English language. Using the 2012 and 2016 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel’s Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS), we find that native speakers of German with English language skills earn a wage premium of 13 percent, on average. Incremental improvements in the level of skills, e.g., from basic to independent user, increase wages by 11 percent, on average. We address endogeneity issues by using novel data that combine comprehensive information about individuals’ characteristics with fine-grained self-assessments of language skills based on descriptors derived from the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Any remaining sources of endogeneity in the level of language proficiency are addressed by an instrumental variable approach that exploits exogenous variation in individuals’ exposure to foreign language acquisition in school. We also show that wage differentials cannot be explained by the value of foreign language skills as a general ability signal, but they are driven by the productive value of such skills. Finally, by examining language skills instead of the use of such skills in the workplace, we identify individual returns to foreign languages for the general population. As education policy is the main determinant of English language acquisition (not only in Germany), this information is highly relevant for policy-makers.

Workers' self‐selection into public sector employment: A tale of absenteeism

AbstractThis study investigated whether employees' career transitions from the private to the public sector are related to their previous absences, where absenteeism is a proxy for a preference for shirking (exerting low effort). The aim was to determine whether workers who shirk are more likely to select public sector jobs. We differentiated absenteeism by type, such as health problems or childcare obligations, versus a preference for low effort. Using 2004 to 2017 data from the German Socioeconomic Panel, which represented 50,565 person‐years, we estimated a duration model of private‐sector workers' exit into public employment, controlling for potential absenteeism drivers, and found a positive relationship between the probability of switching to public employment and absenteeism among workers who were in good health and had no children. This finding supports the conclusion that workers with a preference for low work effort tend to switch to public sector jobs. We further examined potential reverse causality and conducted various robustness checks. The policy implications and potential shortcomings of our results are discussed.

Subjective Well-Being Scarring Through Unemployment: New Evidence from a Long-Running Panel

Abstract Scarring effects of unemployment on subjective well-being (SWB), i.e., negative effects that remain even after workers reenter employment, are well documented in the literature. Nevertheless, the theoretical mechanisms by which unemployment leads to long-lasting negative consequences for SWB are still under debate. Thus, we theorize that unemployment can have an enduring impact mainly through (1) the experience of unemployment as an incisive life event and (2) unemployment as a driver of future unemployment. In the empirical part, we focus on one important dimension of SWB: overall life satisfaction. Based on advanced longitudinal modeling that controls for group-specific trends, we estimate scarring through unemployment using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our results consistently show a large negative effect of unemployment on life satisfaction as well as significant scarring effects that last at least 5 years after reemployment for both men and women as well as for short- and long-term unemployment spells. Further analyses reveal that repeated periods of unemployment drive these effects and cause even longer lasting scarring, implying that there are hardly any adaptations to unemployment that buffer its effect on life satisfaction. We conclude that scarring effects mainly work through repeated episodes of unemployment. Regarding policy implications, our findings suggest that preventing unemployment, regardless of its duration, is beneficial for individual well-being not only in the short term.

There is a mid-life low in well-being in Germany

Kassenboehmer and Haisken-DeNew (2012) claim that there is no well-being midlife low in Germany, when controlling for fixed effects, respondent experience and interviewer characteristics in the German Socio-Economic Panel, 1994–2006. We re-estimate with a longer run of years using their methods and find that well-being declines to a low in midlife and is neither flat nor trivial.

The Wellbeing Valuation Approach: The Monetary Value of Sport Participation and Volunteering for Different Life Satisfaction Measures and Estimators

This study applies the wellbeing valuation approach to sport participation and volunteering using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Linear regression results show that sport and volunteering hours increase satisfaction with life, health, work, income, and leisure, but with diminishing returns in most models. In a seemingly unrelated regression, some of these effects turn insignificant. The instrumental variable estimates show causal impacts of sporting hours on all wellbeing measures, while volunteering only impacts health satisfaction. The monetary values vary depending on the type of wellbeing measure and estimator, indicating that future studies should consider the employed measures and estimators.

Sports Activity Levels of Sexual Minority Groups in Germany

It is widely assumed that LGBT+ people may feel insecure and unwelcome in sports settings, which are often characterized by a binary gender order and a culture of heteronormativity. Previous research also suggests that LGBT+ individuals experience homophobia in the context of sport. Despite these findings, reliable quantitative data on the sports participation levels of sexual minority groups are scarce. The paper addresses this academic void by analyzing sports activity data of sexual minority groups. The 2019 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study is analyzed, which includes a novel LGBT+ boost sample of respondents who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or non-binary with regard to gender. The analysis of this sample shows that sports activity levels (with regard to frequency and duration) of homo- and bisexual individuals are comparable to the heterosexual majority. Although findings show that a high share of homo- and bisexual individuals experience sexual discrimination, discrimination is not associated with lower participation rates in sports. We thus conclude that the domain of sport—although by no means free of discrimination—offers sufficient participation opportunities for LGBT+ people.

Couples' early career trajectories and later life housing consequences in Germany: Investigating cumulative disadvantages.

Using data on couples from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1995-2018), this study investigates how couples' early career trajectories affect housing outcomes in early adulthood and how this effect is mediated by couples' joint cumulative income. We apply a life course perspective by identifying dynamic treatments consisting of couples' consecutive employment statuses and examining their longer-term effects on homeownership and income shares spent on rent. Using multichannel sequence and regression analysis, we find that couples in which both partners have insecure employment trajectories, characterized by frequent spells of fixed-term employment and unemployment, are 25 percentage points less likely to own a home in early adulthood compared to couples with more secure career trajectories. Surprisingly, the couples' cumulative income does not remarkably mediate this effect, explaining less than one-fifth of the total effect. For couples who do not own their home but rent, we find that couples with insecure careers spend between 2 and 5 percentage points more of their joint income on rent compared to couples where both partners have secure career trajectories. Cumulative income disadvantages mediate the effects on shares of income spent on rent and reduce the effect sizes by 30-40%. Our findings indicate that inequalities caused by early career patterns can accumulate not only over time but also within couples and transfer to other areas of life, exacerbating housing and wealth inequalities in the longer run.

Does the Mortality of Individuals with Severe Disabilities Contribute to the Persistent East–West Mortality Gap Among German Men?

After three decades since reunification male life expectancy in East Germany still lags behind that of West Germany. Unlike most of the prior studies focusing on the role of socioeconomic factors, this study aims at assessing the contribution of the population with severe disabilities to the persistent East–West male mortality gap. Our analysis is mainly based on the German Pension Fund data. It is restricted to men aged 30–59 receiving disability pension (DP). We estimate mortality indicators and compare trends among populations with or without DP. We use decomposition method to quantify the effects of changes in mortality and compositional changed in the prevalence of receiving DP on the East–West mortality difference. The analysis covers the period 1995–2013. The German Socioeconomic Panel data and Cox proportional hazard models are used to evaluate the regional differences in the risk of receiving DP. Our results suggest that both the higher prevalence of receiving DP in the East and the higher mortality level among men not receiving DP in the East explain the East–West gap. The mortality difference among those receiving DP is negligible and does not contribute much to it. The observed higher prevalence in receiving DP in the East is very likely to reflect the reality as we found no regional differences in the risk of transitioning to receiving DP. The disadvantageous position of the East can be explained by the post-reunification crisis which particularly hit young men in the 1990s, selective migration from East to West after reunification, and the higher proportion of the healthier foreign population living in the West.

Getting Better or Getting Worse? A Population-Based Study on Trends in Self-Rated Health among Single Mothers in Germany between 1994 and 2018.

Background: While numerous studies suggest that single motherhood is associated with socioeconomic disadvantages and poor health, few studies have analyzed how these conditions have evolved over time. Addressing this gap, we examined the temporal development of self-rated health (SRH) among single compared to partnered mothers, and the role of socioeconomic factors that may have influenced this trend. Methods: We used representative longitudinal data from the German Socioeconomic Panel Survey (G-SOEP) between 1994 and 2018, consisting of 83,843 women with children, aged 30–49 years (13,664 single and 70,179 partnered mothers). Time trends in SRH and socioeconomic factors were analyzed by means of logistic regression analyses. We applied the Karlson–Holm–Breen (KHB) method for decomposing the total time effect into direct and indirect parts via socioeconomic mediators. Results: The predicted probabilities of good SRH decreased in single mothers from 57.0% to 48.4%, while they increased in partnered mothers from 54.8% to 61.3%. Similarly, predicted probabilities of poor SRH rose from 15.0% to 22.7% in single mothers while decreasing slightly from 12.0% to 11.4% in partnered mothers. Moreover, socioeconomic factors worsened over time for single mothers, while they mostly improved for partnered mothers. Decomposing the time trend revealed that the deterioration of single mothers’ health was partly explained by the worsening of socioeconomic disadvantages, of which the decline in full-time employment, the rise in low incomes, and in unemployment contributed most. Conclusions: The alarming rise in socioeconomic and health disadvantages among single mothers in Germany shows that action is needed to counter this trend.

Do feelings of belonging moderate the health threats of perceived discrimination? Evidence from first-generation immigrants living in Germany

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the effects of perceived discrimination on the self-rated health of immigrants living in Germany. Previous research indicates that immigrants’ health is negatively affected by the psychosocial strain caused by perceived discrimination. I analyse whether feelings of belonging to both the origin and the host country play a moderating role in this association: While feelings of belonging to the origin country might buffer the health threat of perceived discrimination, a strong sense of belonging to the host country might exacerbate it because it increases immigrants’ sensitivity and vulnerability to discrimination by the majority society. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study (N = 10,412), I confirm previous research on the harmful effect of perceived discrimination on health. While feelings of belonging to the origin country are not a protective factor, the health threat of perceived discrimination indeed exacerbates with an increasing sense of belonging to the host country.

A Stall Only on the Surface? Working Hours and the Persistence of the Gender Wage Gap in Western Germany 1985–2014

AbstractTo what extent has the closing of the gender gap in hourly wages (‘gender wage gap’; GWG) in Western Germany stalled due to an increasing supply of non-standard working hours? We use descriptive trend analyses and Juhn–Murphy–Pierce decompositions of German Socio-Economic Panel data for the last 30 years (1985–2014) to analyse the extent to which the expansion of part-time and marginal work, as well as overwork, may have contributed to the dynamics of the GWG in Western Germany. We find that the large increase in part-time work among women in combination with increasing wage gaps between part-time and full-time work substantially widened the GWG (by about one-sixth). Working hour effects were large enough to offset the equalizing effects of declining gender gaps in human capital, and they existed even in the public sector. In contrast to the United States, trends in overwork did not have a meaningful impact on the GWG. In an add-on, we find a widening of the gender gap in monthly earnings, but also an important closing of the gender earnings gap unconditional on employment due to an increased labour supply of women. Our results suggest that working hours should be given more consideration in research on family–work conflict and gender earnings inequalities.

Ethno-religious neighbourhood infrastructures and the life satisfaction of immigrants and their descendants in Germany

Urban research assigns immigrant enclaves an ambiguous role. While such areas are seen as rich in beneficial ethno-religious infrastructures and networks, they also tend to be located in deprived and stigmatised inner-city neighbourhoods. Research on neighbourhood attainment provides evidence for both, a desire to attain mainstream middle-class neighbourhoods, which grows the more immigrants and their descendants establish themselves in society, but also a continuing attraction of residing close to co-ethnics. To tease apart this ambiguity, we study how the life satisfaction of immigrants and their descendants depends on the characteristics of the neighbourhood they live in, and pay special attention to heterogeneity along generation, country of origin orientation and income. We use classic measures of neighbourhood quality vis-à-vis newly collected data on the spatial density of ethno-religious minority associations, places of worship and grocers. We link these data to the geocoded German Socio-Economic Panel to predict life satisfaction among immigrants and their descendants. To strengthen a causal interpretation of our results, we employ specifications that address self-selection into neighbourhoods and unobserved confounding. Contra the assumptions of standard assimilation models, we document that ethno-religious infrastructures contribute to increased life satisfaction primarily among the second generation, and there especially among sending-country oriented individuals. This suggests a continuing importance of origin-culture infrastructures for some groups. Furthermore, we find little evidence that overall neighbourhood quality, or the mere share of co-ethnics in a neighbourhood, increases life satisfaction either among immigrants or their descendants.

The relationship between age and subjective well-being: Estimating within and between effects simultaneously

In this paper, we employ a correlated random effects econometric framework to simultaneously estimate the within and between effects of age on subjective well-being based on longitudinal survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). The proposed approach helps to explain differing findings on the relationship between age and subjective well-being reported in a series of studies based on cross-sectional and/or longitudinal panel data. We find empirical support for a wave-like pattern of subjective well-being over the life course. In contrast to the existing literature, our results point to significantly different life cycle patterns for the within- and between-person results. While the between-person results show robust turning points of age around the mid-40s and 90s, the within-person findings indicate that subjective well-being is rather stable between age 16 and 23 and then approaches a local maximum at age 75. We show that the type of variation employed in the empirical analysis (e.g., cross-sectional vs. longitudinal panel) of the age-well-being association has a non-negligible impact on the obtained results and the inferences drawn. Moreover, we do not find support of a U-shape association between subjective well-being and age. This finding holds even if we restrict the sample to those survey respondents aged 18–65 years, indicating that the age-well-being relationship is more complex than a U-shape would predict. A series of additional robustness tests corroborate our main findings.

What Tears Couples Apart: A Machine Learning Analysis of Union Dissolution in Germany.

This study contributes to the literature on union dissolution by adopting a machine learning (ML) approach, specifically Random Survival Forests (RSF). We used RSF to analyze data on 2,038 married or cohabiting couples who participated in the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey, and found that RSF had considerably better predictive accuracy than conventional regression models. The man's and the woman's life satisfaction and the woman's percentage of housework were the most important predictors of union dissolution; several other variables (e.g., woman's working hours, being married) also showed substantial predictive power. RSF was able to detect complex patterns of association, and some predictors examined in previous studies showed marginal or null predictive power. Finally, while we found that some personality traits were strongly predictive of union dissolution, no interactions between those traits were evident, possibly reflecting assortative mating by personality traits. From a methodological point of view, the study demonstrates the potential benefits of ML techniques for the analysis of union dissolution and for demographic research in general. Key features of ML include the ability to handle a large number of predictors, the automatic detection of nonlinearities and nonadditivities between predictors and the outcome, generally superior predictive accuracy, and robustness against multicollinearity.

Cohort, Policy, and Process: The Implications for Migrant Fertility in West Germany

Although a growing literature explores the relationship between migration and fertility, far less scholarship has examined how migrant childbearing varies over time, including across migrant cohorts. I extend previous research by exploring migrant-cohort differences in fertility and the role of changing composition by education and type of family migration. Using 1984-2016 German Socio-Economic Panel data, I investigate the transition into first, second, and third birth among foreign-born women in West Germany. Results from an event-history analysis reveal that education and type of family migration-including marriage migration and family reunions-contribute to differences in first birth across migrant cohorts. Specifically, more rapid entry into first birth among recent migrants from Turkey stems from a greater representation of marriage migrants across arrival cohorts, while increasing education is associated with reduced first birth propensities among recent migrants from Southern Europe. I also find variation in the risk of higher parity transitions across migrant cohorts, particularly lower third birth risks among recent arrivals from Turkey, likely a result of changing exposures within origin and destination contexts. These findings suggest that as political and socioeconomic circumstances vary within origin and destination contexts, selection, adaptation, and socialization processes jointly shape childbearing behavior.