Enhancing the Power of Household Panel Studies: The Case of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) ; Paper Prepared for the StatCan-Conference "Longitudinal Social Surveys in an International Perspective", McGill University, Montreal, 25-27 Jan 2006

We are grateful to Dean R. Lillard (PAM; Cornell University), Stephen P. Jenkins (ISER, University of Essex), and Silke Anger for comments. All remaining errors, in particular gaps in our descriptions of other studies, are our own. We would like to emphasize that this paper is the result of teamwork in Berlin and Munich (see Section 3.1), without whom SOEP’s continuing development would not be possible. We are particularly grateful to the principal investigators, staff and supporters of SOEP in its early years, especially Hans-Juergen Krupp, Richard Hauser, Christof Helberger, Reinhard Hujer, Karl Ulrich Mayer, Horst Seidler, Wolfgang Zapf, Christoph F. Buchtemann and Ute Hanefeld.