Worries across Time and Age in Germany: Bringing Together Open- and Close-Ended Questions

Julia Rohrer (), Martin Bruemmer (), Jürgen Schupp and Gert Wagner
Additional contact information
Julia Rohrer: University of Leipzig
Martin Bruemmer: University of Leipzig

No 10861, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We investigate how worries in Germany change across time and age, drawing on both closed-ended questions (which typically list a number of worry items) and open-ended questions answered in text format. We find that relevant world events influence worries. For example, worries about peace peaked in 2003, the year of the Iraq War, with a considerable number of respondents also referring to the Iraq war in their text responses. Furthermore, we found that - controlling for these historical effects - worries about various topics such as health and the general economic situation increase with age. With increasing age, respondents also became more likely to answer the open-ended question. This suggests that the age increases in worries we found are not merely a result of an age-biased choice of worry items, but instead also hold for worries self-generated by the respondents.

Keywords: worries; German Socio-Economic Panel Study; SOEP; life course; satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 C83 I31 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2017-06
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Published - published as 'Worries across time and age in the German Socio-Economic Panel study' in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2018, 181, 323-343

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Related works:
Working Paper: Worries across Time and Age in Germany: Bringing Together Open- and Close-Ended Questions (2017)
Working Paper: Worries across Time and Age in Germany: Bringing Together Open- and Close-Ended Questions (2017)
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