The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) - Evolution, Scope and Enhancements

TLDR

Current theoretical and empirical developments in the social sciences are briefly outlined. The paper describes the German Socio‑Economic Panel Study, highlighting recent improvements and remaining shortcomings. The authors detail the SOEP’s structure, recent enhancements toward interdisciplinary data collection, and current limitations. The study concludes that there is an urgent need for multidisciplinary longitudinal data, urging cohort and panel studies to evolve into truly interdisciplinary tools.

Abstract

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 conditions and based on a multitude of variables from the social sciences for both theoretical investigation and the evaluation of policy measures. Cohort and panel studies are therefore called upon to become truly interdisciplinary tools. In Section 3, we describe the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), in which we discuss recent improvements of that study which approach this ideal and point out existing shortcomings. Section 4 concludes with a discussion of potential future issues and developments for SOEP and other household panel studies.