Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Benefit Receipt: Evidence from Germany

Jennifer Feichtmayer () and Regina Riphahn
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Jennifer Feichtmayer: University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

No 16660, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the intergenerational transmission of welfare benefit receipt in Germany. We first describe the correlation between welfare receipt experienced in the parental household and subsequent own welfare receipt of young adults. In a second step, we investigate whether the observed correlations reflect causal effects of past welfare experience. We use family fixed effects estimations and Gottschalk's (1996) approach and take advantage of the long-running German Socio-Economic Panel Survey to contribute to a sparse literature. We find strong positive correlations between parental and own welfare receipt. These patterns do, however, not persist after controlling for unobserved heterogeneities. Therefore, our results suggest that the strong intergenerational correlation of welfare benefit receipt is determined by family background rather than by the experience of parental welfare benefit receipt.

Keywords: family fixed effects; causal effect; intergenerational mobility; social assistance; welfare; Gottschalk estimator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C36 I32 I38 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2023-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-lab
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Published - published in: Review of Income and Wealth, 2024, 70 (4), 1226-1251

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Related works:
Working Paper: Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Benefit Receipt: Evidence from Germany (2023)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Benefit Receipt: Evidence from Germany (2023)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Benefit Receipt: Evidence from Germany (2023)
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