The Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is a wide-ranging representative longitudinal study of private households, located at the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW Berlin. Every year, there were nearly 11,000 households, and more than 20,000 persons sampled by the fieldwork organization TNS Infratest Sozialforschung. The data provide information on all household members, consisting of Germans living in the Old and New German States, foreigners, and recent Immigrants to Germany. The Panel was started in 1984. Some of the many topics include household composition, occupational biographies, employment, earnings, health and satisfaction indicators.SOEP data are disseminated to about 600 (inter-) national users in several formats on one DVD, accompanied by extensive documentation (also available on our documentation sites), both as raw data and in SAS, STATA and SPSS formats. Regional indicators below the federal states can only be accessed via RDC SOEP at DIW Berlin.