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Short-Documentation of the Update of the SOEP-Weights, 1984–2008

With the 2008 data, we are distributing a revised version of the SOEP weighting variables from waves 1984 to 2008. The amendments affect the cross-sectional weights (AHHRF-YHHRF) only and not the longitudinal weighting variables (BHLEIB-YHBLEIB). Several developments led to the retroactive update of the cross-sectional weights. First, the SOEP data can now be linked to extensive regional information that was unavailable at the time of the initial sampling. A growing number of commercially provided neighborhood characteristics can be linked to addresses of SOEP households (MICROM). Moreover, the census office is providing a growing number of regional characteristics on the county level in Germany (INKAR Indikatoren und Karten zur Raumund Stadtentwicklung). We use these retrospectively collected regional data to improve the fit of first-wave response models, which –as with any cross-sectional survey– suffer from the paucity of information available on both respondents and non-respondents. Second, in the past, the strategy of post-stratifying the weighting variables to correspond with certain marginal distributions of the overall population (age, gender, household size, etc.) as recorded by the German census was introduced gradually over time. In the update of the cross-sectional weights, we use the same set of population characteristics more consistently for poststratification in all waves of the SOEP and also extend post-stratification to match the regional distribution of households in Germany (size of communities and states (=Bundesländer)). Finally, our impression from users’ feedback was that after 25 waves, the growing number of weighting variables for each wave but also for different combinations of sub-samples (e.g., one set omitting certain sub-samples, one