Jan Goebel

Using Analysis of Gini (ANOGI) for Detecting Whether Two Subsamples Represent the Same Universe

A wildly discussed shortcoming of panel surveys is a potential bias arising from selective attrition. Based on data of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), the authors analyze potential artifacts (level, structure, income inequality) by comparing results for two independently drawn panel subsamples started in 1984 and 2000. They apply ANOGI (analysis of Gini) techniques, the equivalent of ANOVA performed with the Gini coefficient. They rearrange, reinterpret, and use the decomposition in the comparison of subpopulations from which the different samples were drawn. Taking into account indicators for income, significant differences between these two samples with respect to income inequality are found in the first year, which start to fade away in Wave 2 and disappear in Wave 3. The authors find credible indication for these differences to be driven by changes in response behavior of short-term panel members rather than by attrition among members of the longer running sample.

Where people live and die makes a difference : Individual and geographic disparities in well-being progression at the end of life

Life-span psychological research has long been interested in the contextual embeddedness of individual development. To examine whether and how regional variables relate to between-person disparities in the progression of late-life well-being, we applied three-level growth curve models to 24-year longitudinal data from deceased participants of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (N = 3,427; age at death = 18 to 101 years). Results indicated steep declines in well-being with impending death, with some 8% of the between-person differences in both level and decline of well-being reflecting between-county differences. Exploratory analyses revealed that individuals living and dying in less affluent counties reported lower late-life well-being, controlling for key individual predictors, including age at death, gender, education, and household income. The regional variables examined did not directly relate to well-being change but were found to moderate (e.g., amplify) the disparities in change attributed to individual variables. Our results suggest that resource-poor counties provide relatively less fertile grounds for successful aging until the end of life and may serve to exacerbate disparities. We conclude that examinations of how individual and residential characteristics interact can further our understanding of individual psychological outcomes and suggest routes for future inquiry.

How natural disasters can affect environmental concerns, risk aversion, and even politics: evidence from Fukushima and three European countries

We study the impact of the Fukushima disaster on environmental concerns, well-being, risk aversion, and political preferences in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. In these countries, overall life satisfaction did not significantly decrease, but the disaster significantly increased environmental concerns among Germans. One underlying mechanism likely operated through the perceived risk of a similar meltdown of domestic reactors. After Fukushima, more Germans considered themselves as “very risk averse.” However, drastic German policy action shut down the oldest reactors, implemented the phaseout of the remaining ones, and proclaimed the transition to renewables. This shift in energy policy contributed to the subsequent decrease in environmental concerns, particularly among women, Green party supporters, and people living in close distance to the oldest reactors. In Germany, political support for the Greens increased significantly, whereas in Switzerland and the UK, this increase was limited to people living close to reactors.

Assessing the Distributional Impact of 'Imputed Rent' and 'Non-Cash Employee Income' in Microdata: Case studies based on EU-SILC (2004) and SOEP (2002)

There is general agreement about the importance of integrating non-monetary income components into cash-based income measures in order to improve the comparability of distribution results across time and space. Based on micro-data from the first round of EU-SILC (EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) collected in 12 EU countries in 2004 and placing strong emphasis on methodological aspects of determining non-cash incomes, this paper investigates the incidence, scope and distributional impact of imputed rent and private use of company cars. Imputed rent can be calculated using a variety of approaches. Thus in the present paper EU-SILC-based results for Denmark, France and Finland - with each of these countries applying a different method - are contrasted to findings derived from the 2002 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). This makes it possible to operationalize three different methods for the very same population, thus supporting sensitivity analyses keeping all other influential factors constant. In general, there is a tendency toward decreasing inequality and poverty once including imputed rent in the income measure. Inequality decomposition by age shows a rising income advantage from owner-occupied housing (including tenants with reduced rent payments) for the elderly, confirming the importance of owner-occupied (and reduced rent) housing as a means of old age provision. However, while we can identify some cross-national differences, we cannot clearly determine the degree to which the variation between Denmark, Finland, and France actually depends on the choice of the methodology applied to measure IR. A further complication results from the fact that for Denmark and Finland, only a gross measure of IR is given in the currently available EU-SILC data, while for France, a net measure is included. Apparently a gross measure is not appropriate for the type of welfare-oriented analysis presented here. Furthermore, we find evidence that the substantive results on inequality are sensitive to the choice of the approach in the German data, thus supporting the principal demand for an extensively harmonized measure across countries. Results for company cars show a great deal of variety in the incidence of this noncash employee income component (as low as 2 to 3% in Ireland and Norway and as much as 25% in Finland and Sweden). While this income source accounts for not more than 2% of overall compensation in any of the countries considered, there is a general finding that the additional consideration of company cars in the employee income measure yields higher degrees of wage dispersion. Concluding, the empirical assessment of EU-SILC data demonstrates the relevance of including non-cash components when comparing income and wage distribution results across Europe. At the same time, it becomes apparent that cross-national comparability is very much a matter of data availability (e.g., for a measure of net IR, this pertains to information about the relevant costs to be deducted at the micro-level) as well as the national framework (e.g., size of the private rental market as basis of the opportunity cost approach to generating IR). As such, any deviation from a generally proposed approach to capture such non-cash income effects will have to be well justified so as not to jeopardize cross-national comparability. However, given explicit cross-national variation, e.g., in the tax and transfer regimes, functional equivalents for capturing non-cash income components are being sought, and not necessarily national applications of pre-defined algorithms.

Am Ende der Kernstadt – ein Versuch der Abgrenzung des Physischen durch das Subjektive

Wo beginnt eine Stadt bzw. wo hort sie auf? Selbst Ubergange zwischen einzelnen physischen Stadtzonen, unterliegen - mit Ausnahme besonders charakteristischer Stadtmorphologien wie sie in Stadten wie Paris oder Koln zu finden sind – haufig der Subjektivitat des Betrachters. Doch genau diese Subjektivitat, nach welcher welche ein Gebaude, einen Strasenzug oder einen Stadtteil von einer Person noch zum Stadtzentrum gehort, fuhrt bei einer anderen bereits zur Assoziation mit der der Peripherie. Auf Basis von Haushaltsbefragungen des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels und des physischen Morphologiemerkmals Dichte wird fur alle Grosstadte in Deutschland die Perzeption von Betrachtern und der Abgrenzung des Stadtzentrums untersucht. Es zeigt sich, dass ein Zusammenhang zwischen der physischen Dichte und der subjektiven Wahrnehmung des Zentrumsbegriffes ein Zusammenhang besteht.

What else are you worried about? – Integrating textual responses into quantitative social science research

Open-ended questions have routinely been included in large-scale survey and panel studies, yet there is some perplexity about how to actually incorporate the answers to such questions into quantitative social science research. Tools developed recently in the domain of natural language processing offer a wide range of options for the automated analysis of such textual data, but their implementation has lagged behind. In this study, we demonstrate straightforward procedures that can be applied to process and analyze textual data for the purposes of quantitative social science research. Using more than 35,000 textual answers to the question “What else are you worried about?” from participants of the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP), we (1) analyzed characteristics of respondents that determined whether they answered the open-ended question, (2) used the textual data to detect relevant topics that were reported by the respondents, and (3) linked the features of the respondents to the worries they reported in their textual data. The potential uses as well as the limitations of the automated analysis of textual data are discussed.

Zur verbesserten Erfassung von Nettohaushaltseinkommen und Vermögen in Haushaltssurveys

Die zuverlassige Erhebung von hohen Einkommen und des Vermogens gilt im Rahmen von Surveys als schwierig (Wagner und Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik 2003). Dabei werden neben der oft monierten zu geringen Stichprobengrose insbesondere Probleme bei der Erfassung der Rander der Verteilungen, also von sehr niedrigen und sehr hohen Einkommen bzw. Vermogen, betont (Wagner u.a. 2007).

Deindustrialization and the Polarization of Household Incomes: The Example of Urban Agglomerations in Germany

The tertiarization, or perhaps more accurately, the deindustrialization of the economy has left deep scars on cities. It is evident not only in the industrial wastelands and empty factory buildings scattered throughout the urban landscape, but also in the income and social structures of cities. Industrialization, collective wage setting and the welfare state led to a stark reduction in income differences over the course of the twentieth century. Conversely, deindustrialization and the shift to tertiary sectors could result in increasing wage differentiation. Moreover, numerous studies on global cities, the dual city, and divided cities have also identified income polarization as a central phenomenon in the development of major cities. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we find an increasing polarization of household income structures since the mid-1990. In agglomerations, this income polarization is even more pronounced than in the more rural regions. The income polarization in Germany is likely to have multiple causes, some of which are directly linked to policies such as the deregulation of the labor market. But extensive deindustrialization is probably also one of the drivers, that has led directly to the weakening of middle income groups.

Terminal decline in well-being differs between residents in East Germany and West Germany

Lifespan research has long been interested in how contexts shape individual development. Using the separation and later reunification of Germany as a kind of natural experiment we examine whether and how living and dying in the former East or West German context has differentially shaped late-life development of well-being. We apply multi-level growth models to annual reports of life satisfaction collected over 20+ years since German reunification from 4,159 deceased participants in the Socio-Economic Panel (NWest= 3,079, Mage at death = 73.90, 47% women; NEast= 1,080, Mage at death = 72.23, 48% women). We examine differences between East and West Germany in levels, rates of change, and onset of terminal decline in well-being and the role of age at death, gender, education, disability and time spent in reunification. Analyses revealed that West Germans reported higher life satisfaction than East Germans, and that these differences get smaller both with passing time since reunification and in late life. The gap between East and West Germany diminishes over the last 10 years of life by more than 25%. Taking into account key individual characteristics only slightly attenuated this pattern, with education and age at death moderating late-life well-being level and decline in East Germany. Our results are consistent with long-standing notions that contextual factors shape individual development and illustrate the plasticity of human development. After having experienced disadvantages in life circumstances for up to 40 years through living in East Germany, effects of this natural experiment diminish considerably with passing time since reunification.

Deindustrialisation and the polarisation of household incomes: The example of urban agglomerations in Germany

The tertiarisation, or perhaps more accurately, the deindustrialisation of the economy has left deep scars on cities. It is evident not only in the industrial wastelands and empty factory buildings, but also in the income and social structures of cities. Industrialisation, collective wage setting, and the welfare state led to a stark reduction in income differences over the course of the 20th century. Conversely, deindustrialisation and the shift to tertiary sectors could result in increasing wage differentiation. Moreover, numerous studies on global cities, the dual city, and divided cities have also identified income polarisation as a central phenomenon in the development of major cities. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we find an increasing polarisation of household income structures since the mid-1990s. In urban agglomerations, this income polarisation is even more pronounced than in the more rural regions. The income polarisation in Germany is likely to have multiple causes, some of which are directly linked to policies such as the deregulation of the labour market. But extensive deindustrialisation is probably also one of the drivers of this process, and it has directly weakened Germany’s middle-income groups.