The paper demonstrates how Sen’s (1985) alternative approach to welfare economics can be used to shed light on the wellbeing of very young children. More specifically, we estimate versions of the three key relations from his framework using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP,...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this paper analyses the effects of spending part of adolescents' leisure time on playing music or doing sports, or both. We find that while playing music fosters educational outcomes compared to doing sports, particularly so for girls and children...

In this paper we present sibling and neighbor correlations in school grades and cognitive skills as well as indicators of physical and mental health for a sample of German adolescents. In a first step, we estimate sibling correlations and find substantial influence of shared family and community...

Substantial research on the relationship between family structures and child outcomes represents a considerable part of the literature. However, family structure provides a rather static view of the relationship of children's living arrangements and their well-being, revealing hardly anything...

Youth is one of the phases in the life-cycle when some of the most decisive life transitions take place. Entering the labour market or leaving parental home are events with important consequences for the economic well-being of young adults. In this paper, the interrelationship between...

We investigate the causal effect of age at migration on subsequent educational attainment in the destination country. To identify the causal effect we compare the educational attainment of siblings at age 21, exploiting the fact that they typically migrate at different ages within a given...

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...

This paper investigates gender differences in the spatial mobility of young adults when initially leaving their parental home. Using individual data from 11 waves (2000-2010) of the SOEP, we examine whether female home leavers in East Germany move across greater distances than males and whether...

Disconnectedness among youth can have several dimensions. From a socio-economic viewpoint, failure in school, unemployment and the lack of an intimate relationship are among the most important ones. In our samples from SOEP youth questionnaires, approximately 13% of young people in Germany...