Job Satisfaction Declines in Late Work Life – A Time-to-Retirement Approach

Job satisfaction has previously been found to increase across the life span. However, few studies have focused on the very last years of working life. We applied a time-to-retirement approach to job satisfaction and investigated change in job satisfaction in the ten years before retirement in the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP, n = 2,619). Job satisfaction showed a small non-linear decline as people approached retirement. An older retirement age was associated with lower job satisfaction before retirement, but not with change before retirement. Because the GSOEP spans from 1984 until 2019, we were able to investigate historical time trends. Overall levels of pre-retirement job satisfaction seem to have decreased since the mid-1980s, but intra-individual declines before retirement seem to have become smaller. Further analyses showed the association between job satisfaction and life satisfaction declined when people were nearing retirement. This may be a sign of disengagement from work and a shift of focus to other areas of life in preparation for retirement. Our results show the usefulness of a time-to-retirement approach and the importance of taking the last work years into account when discussing the satisfaction and motivation of older workers in an aging society.

The effects of health shocks on family status: do financial incentives encourage marriage?

This paper asks whether marriage decisions of unmarried mature couples are driven by the prospect of financial advantages for the later widowed after one partner has suffered a serious health shock. We hypothesize that, in contrast to traditional marriage models, such health shocks may induce unmarried couples to obtain economic benefits, such as survivors’ pensions in particular, through marriage in advance of one partner’s death. This question has not yet been studied empirically. Hazard models capturing unobserved effects are applied to longitudinal data of the German Socioeconomic Panel. It turns out that the probability of marriage after male partners’ health shocks can increase significantly depending on the amount of expected survivors’ pensions for the (likely) surviving female partners. In contrast, an increased probability of marriage after health shocks to women (depending on the expected financial benefits to men) was not found. These findings are supported by various robustness checks. Economic and political implications are discussed and the results are placed in an international context.

The Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters*

We investigate economic causes of the rising support of populist parties in industrialized countries. Looking at Germany, we find that exposure to imports from low wage countries increases the support for nationalist parties between 1987–2009, while increasing exports have the opposite effect. The net effect translates into increasing support of the right-populist AfD after its emergence in 2013. Individual data from the German Socioeconomic Panel reveal that low-skilled manufacturing workers’ political preferences are most responsive to trade exposure. Using a novel approach to causal mediation analysis, we identify trade-induced labor market adjustments as economic mechanism causing the voting response to international trade.

Diverse Effects of Mass Media Concerns about Immigration: New Evidence from Germany, 2001 - 2016

Media discourse is often seen as an important condition of people's attitudes and perceptions. Despite a rich literature, however, it is not well understood how media exposure influences attitudes towards immigrants. In contrast to previous studies, we argue that people rely on 'availability heuristics' shaped by mass media. From that point of view, it is the specific content of media discourse on immigration that affects people's concerns. We use 'Structural Topic Models' to classify media content of more than 24.000 articles of leading German newspapers from 2001 to 2016. Utilizing 'linear fixed effect models' allows us to relate a person's concern towards immigration as reported in the German Socioeconomic Panel to prevalent topics discussed in print media while controlling for several confounding factors (e.g., party preferences, interest in politics, etc.). We find a robust relationship between topic salience and attitudes towards integration. Our results also reveal that specific topics with negative contents (e.g., domestic violence) to increase concerns, while others (e.g., scientific studies, soccer) decrease concerns substantially, underlining the importance of available information provided by media. In addition, people with higher education are generally less affected by media salience of topics.

2D:4D and Self-Employment: A Preregistered Replication Study in a Large General Population Sample

The 2D: 4D digit ratio, the ratio of the length of the second finger to the length of the fourth finger, is often considered a proxy for testosterone exposure in utero. A recent study reported, among other things, an association between the left-hand 2D:4D and self-employment in a sample of 974 adults. In this preregistered study, we replicate the 2D:4D results on a sample of more than 2100 adults from the German Socioeconomic Panel-Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS). We find no statistically significant associations between 2D:4D and self-employment.

Co-development of Couples’ Life Satisfaction in Transition to Retirement: A Longitudinal Dyadic Perspective

Objectives Retirement is one of the major life course transitions in old age. Evidence suggests that exiting work life is associated with notable changes in life satisfaction, which are heterogeneous across individuals. Effects of retirement transitions on life satisfaction have been understudied in couples. We examined change in life satisfaction with retirement for retirees and their spouses/partners, the extent to which change in life satisfaction was heterogeneous and correlated within couples, and associations with health status and social participation. Method We used data from the German Socioeconomic Panel obtained in the years 1984 to 2016 (n = 2,117 couples; 74% male retirees; age at retirement: M = 61 years, SD = 3 years, range = 55 to 70 years; 98% married or in a registered relationship). We examined health and social participation of retirees and their partners as predictor variables and controlled for age, gender, education, partner employment, household income, and region in Germany (former East vs West). Data were analyzed with dyadic multilevel two-phase growth curve models. Results On average, both retirees and partners reported increasing life satisfaction at retirement. Change in life satisfaction was heterogeneous across individuals and highly correlated within couples. Health and social participation were associated with levels of, but not with change in life satisfaction with retirement in retirees and partners. Discussion Retirement is not a uniform period of transition, but is shaped by the multidimensional context in which life unfolds. Moreover, life satisfaction can be shaped in response to life transitions experienced by close others.

Social isolation as a consequence of transitions in partner relationships: How formations and endings of partner relationships affect the risk of social disconnectedness

Objective: The study examines whether the risk of social isolation is affected by a union formation, marriage and by relationship endings. Background: Social isolation is a broadly discussed social problem but little is known about how social isolation emerges. As regards the role of partner relationships, previous research has yielded mixed results on whether there are isolating effects of marriage, separations or widowhood. Method: We use longitudinal data deriving from the German Socioeconomic Panel to analyse the impact of transitions in partner relationships on different manifestations of social isolation (disconnectedness from friends and relatives, non-participation in civic associations). Analyses on the impact of union formation and marriage are based on information on 11,359 persons. Analyses on the impact of relationship endings are based on information on 30,730 persons. Results: Union formation and marriage are found to have little effect in terms of promoting social isolation. Endings of partner relationships, by contrast, entail an increased risk of being isolated at the same time from friendships, relatives and civil associations. Conclusion: Taken together, the findings suggest that those who had limited their social interaction to the spouse or partner often fail to become re-integrated when the relationship had ended. It can be assumed that this is a common pathway into social isolation.

Distributional Regression Techniques in Socioeconomic Research on the Inequality of Health with an Application on the Relationship between Mental Health and Income

This study addresses the much-discussed issue of the relationship between health and income. In particular, it focuses on the relation between mental health and household income by using generalized additive models of location, scale and shape and thus employing a distributional perspective. Furthermore, this study aims to give guidelines to applied researchers interested in taking a distributional perspective on health inequalities. In our analysis we use cross-sectional data of the German socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). We find that when not only looking at the expected mental health score of an individual but also at other distributional aspects, like the risk of moderate and severe mental illness, that the relationship between income and mental health is much more pronounced. We thus show that taking a distributional perspective, can add to and indeed enrich the mostly mean-based assessment of existent health inequalities.