Immigration Participation in Social Assistance Programs

Regina Riphahn

No 15, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The share of foreigners in the German social assistance program exceeds their population share and continues to grow. This study tests whether higher foreigner welfare dependence is due to foreign-native differences in behavior as opposed to exogenous characteristics. The determinants of welfare dependence are analyzed using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (1984-1996). Panel attrition and welfare dependence processes are modeled jointly. The difference in aggregate welfare dependence appears to be due to characteristics, where the household head=s labor market status and single parent status are central, with significant differences in the response rates of German and foreign households to given characteristics. The controls for attrition have strong effects on the estimation and simulation results.

Keywords: immigration; social assistance; welfare dependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 1998-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Applied Economics Quarterly, 2004, 50 (4), 329–362

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().