Socio Economic Panel

The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP [/'zœp/], for Sozio-oekonomisches Panel) is a longitudinal panel dataset of the population in Germany. It is a household based study which started in 1984 and which reinterviews adult household members annually. Additional samples have been taken of East Germans (from 1990, coincident with reunification) and immigrants (in 1994) as well as in 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2006. In 2007, there will be about 12,000 households, and more than 20,000 adult persons sampled. Some of the many topics surveyed include household composition, occupation, employment, earnings, health and life satisfaction. The annual surveys are conducted by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). The survey is funded by the German Federal Government and the State of Berlin via the «Bund-Länder-Kommission» (State/Federal State Commission) for Educational Planning and Research Promotion.

Data are available to social science researchers in Germany and abroad in SPSS/PSPP, SAS/DAP, Stata, R/S-PLUS and ASCII format. Extensive documentation in English and German is available online.

SOEP data are integrated into the Cross National Equivalent File (CNEF) which contains panel data from Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain and the United States. The data distribution of the SOEP for researchers outside of Germany is supplied with the CNEF by a group at Cornell University. Application to use this international distribution has to be made to the DIW Berlin.