The German flood disaster of summer 2002 highlighted a dilemma concerning insurance against damages caused by natural forces. On the one hand, mindful of the rising incidence of natural disasters, private insurance companies are increasingly withdrawing coverage against natural catastrophes,...

There are strong two-way links between parent and child happiness (life satisfaction), even for 'children' who have grown up, moved to their own home and partnered themselves. German panel evidence shows that transmission of (un)happiness from parents to children is partly due to transmission of...

The German economy is not only affected by unification of Germany but by a significant influx of immigrants from abroad and huge migration from East to West Germany around the date of unification. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) allows one to disentangle those effects by...

This paper analyzes naming behavior in Germany in the context of rapid social change. It begins with an overview of general developments in naming in Germany over the last one hundred years, based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), which supplies us with almost 45,000...

Using a mobile-phone-based experience-sampling technology in a sample of 378 individuals ranging from 14 to 86 years of age, we investigated age differences in how people want to influence their feelings in their daily lives. Contra-hedonic motivations of wanting either to maintain or enhance...

This investigation draws on detailed, longitudinal sample survey data to examine declining fertility in East Germany. Since the unification of Germany in 1990, the fertility rate in East Germany has been halved-falling well below that of West Germany, which was already among the lowest in the...

How socio-cultural contexts shape individual functioning is of prime interest for psychological inquiry. Secular increases favoring later-born cohorts in fluid intelligence measures are widely documented for young adults. In the current study, we quantify such trends in old age using data from...

Background: Effort-reward imbalance (ERI) is an established conceptualisation of work stress. Although a validated effort-reward questionnaire is available for public use, many epidemiological studies adopt shortened scales and proxy measures. To examine the agreement between different...

Yet again, no significant economic stimulus is expected from this year’s World Cup. Investments in stadiums and infrastructure in Brazil have certainly resulted in high costs for the public sector, but no significantly positive overall economic impact is expected in the course of the next few...

At the FIFA World Cup 2006, the method of using the market value of the teams (“transfer value”) was first proposed as a simple and transparent basis for forecasting the outcome of a major football tournament. Indeed, the countries with players of the highest market value were world...