Does immigration weaken natives' support for the welfare state? Evidence from Germany

Holger Stichnoth

No 10-008, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Using data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and from official statistics, I study whether natives are less supportive of state help for the unemployed in regions where the share of foreigners among the unemployed is high. Unlike previous studies, I use individual-level panel data, which allows a more convincing identification of a causal effect. I find that the negative bivariate association is mainly driven by observed individual differences such as East German origin or income. While there remains some evidence of a negative association even after adjusting for individual differences (including time-invariant unobserved differences), the association is weak compared to the association with other variables such as income, self-employment, or East German origin.

Keywords: redistribution; social security; welfare state; immigration; ethnic diversity; Germany; cluster-robust standard errors; two-way clustering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H53 H55 I38 J15 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Does Immigration Weaken Natives' Support for the Welfare State?: Evidence from Germany (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:10008

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