Proceedings of the 10th International Socio-Economic Panel User Conference (SOEP 2012).

In summer 2012, we welcomed over 160 participants from 10 countries to the conference. Over two days, we had exciting discussions of 66 papers and 15 posters by economists, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, geographers, and survey methodologists covering a wide range of research topics such as income inequality, well-being and happiness, social mobility, health and family issues, and intergenerational research. The Conference Program Committee, consisting of Janet Gornick, C. Katharina Spiess, Nicolas Ziebarth, and Jürgen Schupp, were responsible for selection and planning of the anniversary program. Many of the papers at this year‘s conference dealt with the distribution of social resources and its trends, causes, and consequences – a core interest shared by a large number of SOEP researchers. Some of these papers addressed specific questions of access to education and jobs, changes in upward social mobility, but also effects of unemployment and downward social mobility.