This research investigates how family events in adult children's lives influence the timing of their parents' financial transfers. We draw on retrospective data collected by the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and use event history models to study the effects of marriage, divorce, and...

According to sociological theories on educational choice, risk aversion is the main driving force for class-specific educational decisions. Families from upper social classes have to opt for the academically most demanding, long-lasting courses to avoid an intergenerational status loss. Families...

Although in Germany, there is a regular age of school entry, some children start school later than usual and some children start ahead of schedule. While there has been some decrease in delayed school entries in the last years, the rate of premature school entry has increased substantially....

Objective: This study examines how changes in cohabitation or marital status affect Body Mass Index (BMI) over time in a large representative sample. Methods: Participants were 20,950 individuals (50% female; 19 to 100 years), representative of the German population, who provided 81,926...

This article discusses legal, economic and political aspects of the German compulsory military service. We argue that Germany should introduce a professional army because it is more efficient and less prone to cause problems with vertical and horizontal tax equity. In addition most of the...

We compare large inter vivos transfers to bequests using retrospectively surveyed event history data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP). We find the chances of receiving gifts and bequests to depend strongly on the socio-economic position of the parents and on the number of...

To investigate whether the influence of social origins on educational participation increases or diminishes over the educational career in Germany, this paper examines the probability of social access and the later chances to survive in the academic school track. I find, first, a very strong...

Die Ableistung eines Wehr- oder Zivildienstes kann als "Naturalsteuer" interpretiert werden. Folglich lässt sich die praktizierte Heranziehung zu einem dieser Dienste nach Kriterien der Steuergerechtigkeit beurteilen. Seit Einführung der Wehrpflicht in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Jahre...

This study investigates how far attending child care institutions can reduce delayed school entries in Germany. The influence of child care institutions should be stronger when children attend them at younger ages, and it should vary according to the children’s social origins. When parents’...

Der empirischen Forschung zu intergenerationalen Finanztransfers fehlt eine Längsschnittbetrachtung. Schenkungen eignen sich besonders gut, um innerfamiliale Solidarität und Transfers aus einer lebensverlaufsbezogenen Perspektive zu untersuchen, da sie - im Gegensatz zu Erbschaften - zeitlich...