This paper applies semiparametric regression models using penalized splines to investigate the profile of well-being over the life span. Splines have the advantage that they do not require a priori assumptions about the form of the curve. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)...

The determinants of migrants' remittances are the subject of this study based on German SOEP data (2001-2006). In contrast to previous studies we analyze the motives for remittances not only for foreigners but also for the broader group of individuals with a personal migration background. Major...

After the introduction in Section 2, we very briefly sketch out current theoretical and empirical developments in the social sciences. In our view, they all point in the same direction: toward the acute and increasing need for multidisciplinary longitudinal data covering a wide range of living...

Research findings have proven that the willingness to take risks is distributed heterogeneously among individuals. In the general public, there is a widely held notion that individuals of certain nationalities tend to hold certain typical risk preferences. Furthermore, religious beliefs are...

Homeownership rates are very different across European countries. They range from below 50% in Germany to over 80% in Greece, Spain or Ireland. However the differences lie not only in the overall homeownership rates but also in its structure, and this is the focus of this paper. Its aim is to...

This paper analyzes whether immigrant families facing credit constraints adopt a family investment strategy wherein, upon arrival, an immigrant spouse invests in host country-specific human capital while the other partner works to finance the family's current consumption. Using data for West...

Since it is still unclear to what extent time allocation retrospectively reported in questionnaires, reflects people's actual behavior, examining the accuracy of responses to time use survey questions is of crucial importance. We analyze the congruence of time use information assessed through...

In a simple 2-period model of relative income under uncertainty, higher comparison income for the younger cohort can signal higher or lower expected lifetime relative income, and hence either increase or decrease well-being. With data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British...

Posner (1995) proposes the redistribution of health spending from old women to old men to equalize life expectancy. His argument is based on the assumption that the woman's utility is higher if her husband is alive. Using self-reported satisfaction measures from a long-running German panel...

Empirical analyses on the determinants of life satisfaction often include the impact of the number of children variable among controls without fully discriminating between its two (socio-relational and pecuniary) components. In our empirical analysis on the German Socioeconomic Panel we show...