A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Bönke, Timm; Neidhöfer, Guido Working Paper Parental background matters: Intergenerational mobility and assimilation of Italian immigrants in Germany SFB/TR 15 Discussion Paper, No. 502 Provided in Cooperation with: Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 15: Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems Suggested Citation: Bönke, Timm; Neidhöfer, Guido (2015) : Parental background matters: Intergenerational mobility and assimilation of Italian immigrants in Germany, SFB/TR 15 Discussion Paper, No. 502, Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio 15 - Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems (GESY), München, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-24835-7 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/121372 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. 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Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio 15 · www.sfbtr15.de Universität Mannheim · Freie Universität Berlin · Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin · Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn · Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung Mannheim Speaker: Prof. Dr. Klaus M. Schmidt · Department of Economics · University of Munich · D-80539 Munich, Phone: +49(89)2180 2250 · Fax: +49(89)2180 3510 Parental background matters: Intergenerational mobility and assimilation of Italian immigrants in Germany Timm Bönke Guido Neidhöfer∗ Freie Universität Berlin Abstract. We investigate the hypothesis of failed integration and low social mobility of immigrants. An intergenerational assimilation model is tested empirically on household survey data and validated against administrative data provided us by the Italian Embassy in Germany. Although we confirm sub- stantial inequality of educational achievements between immigrants and natives, we find that the children of Italian immigrants exhibit high intergenerational mobility and no less opportunities than natives to achieve high schooling degrees. These findings suggest a rejection of the failed assimilation hypothesis. Additionally, we evaluate different patterns by time of arrival, Italian region of origin and language spoken at home. Keywords: Intergenerational Mobility; Education; Integration and Assimilation of Immigrants. JEL Classification: I24, J15, J62. School of Business & Economics, Freie Universität Berlin Address: Boltzmannstr. 20, 14195 Berlin, Germany. Tel. +49 30 838 60513 ∗Corresponding author. [email protected] Acknowledgements. Special thanks go to Giacomo Corneo for his continued support and useful suggestions. We also grate- fully acknowledge Andrea Brandolini, Daniele Checchi and Dirk Van De Gaer for insightful comments, as well as participants of conferences and seminars in Bari, Turin, Clermont-Ferrand, La Plata, Vienna, Pisa and Berlin. Financial support by the German Science Foundation (DFG) through SFB/TR 15 is gratefully acknowledged. Furthermore, we would like to sincerely thank the Department of Social Affairs and the Statistical office of the Italian Embassy in Germany for kindly providing the original data and Hans-Böckler-Foundation for financial support. The usual disclaimer applies. 1 Introduction The assimilation of immigrants has been a topic of interest for researchers and the public for a long time, and over the last decades in particular the intergenerational dimension has come more and more into the focus (among others Card, 2005). Especially the case of low skilled immigrants and their off- spring is an intensely discussed topic of high political relevance. Indeed, various countries experienced for different reasons an influx of ethnically rather homogeneous groups of low skilled immigrants which are often perceived to integrate less well into native society than other groups. In Germany, for example, this issue applies for immigrants from former guest worker recruitment states (inter alia Turkey, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, former Yugoslavia). Not only that people with migration background – ap- proximately 20 % of the German population – have on average lower levels of education than the native population; among immigrants, former guest workers and their offspring show the lowest levels of edu- cational achievements (Bildungsbericht, 2012). This is often interpreted in the sense, that children and grandchildren of low skilled immigrants lack the opportunities to catch up with their native peers or face even discrimination. In the debate on integration of immigrants often cross sectional data is referred to. However, looking at “snapshots” in time gives only limited insights and when dealing with integration and assimilation of immigrants the picture obtained is very incomplete. In order to identify the level of long term eco- nomic assimilation it is more expedient to evaluate the improvement of second generation immigrants in relation to their parents’ socio-economic situation and to compare their opportunities to achieve certain outcomes with respect to natives. In addition, to look at rather homogeneous groups of immigrants sep- arately provides the possibility to single out potential differences in the influence of the ethnic, national or regional background. However, studies concerned with intergenerational aspects of migration usually investigate the whole group of immigrants as a single sub-population. Information on national or ethnic background is merely included as a control or to perform the analysis with reduced numbers of observa- tions – this procedure is mainly due to data limitations.1 In this study, we therefore refine the analysis focusing on one group, the Italian immigrants in Germany, and measure their intergenerational mobility 1Data availability is especially an issue for Germany, while for the United States some studies focus on Mexican or Hispanic immigrants (e.g. Smith, 2003; Caponi, 2011). For a summary of the literature on the intergenerational mobility of immigrants see Dustmann and Glitz (2011). 2 in terms of education and their assimilation into native society. Italian immigrants are particularly suitable for our purposes: Italy was the first state signing a bi- lateral recruitment agreement with Germany in 1955 and people with Italian migration background are still one of the groups with the on average lowest educational achievements. This is documented by offi- cial statistics and confirmed by several economic and sociological studies (Algan et al., 2010; Gang and Zimmermann, 2000; Kristen and Granato, 2007; Luthra, 2010), with the result that the public opinion raised concerns about their integration into German society. Another important issue is data availabil- ity. Although the number of Italian immigrants covered in surveys is sufficiently high and presumably representative to conduct an intergenerational analysis, another powerful data source is at our disposal: the Italian ministerial registry data on Italians living abroad in Germany. This enables us to cross-check results obtained from survey data and, for the first time, also to investigate patterns within the group of Italian immigrants. Our analysis basically consists in three steps: First, we calculate the degree of intergenerational educational mobility of immigrants and natives, controlling for “the quality of the ethnic environment in which parents make their investments”, the ethnic capital as introduced by Borjas (1993). Thereby, we subdivide the sample of immigrants between first and second generation, and evaluate the impact of some migration specific features, like time of arrival, geographic region of origin, language spoken at home and parental country of birth. Alternative measures of intergenerational mobility are also obtained from transition matrices. Second, adopting a different set up, we estimate the probability of immigrants to achieve high schooling degrees, given their parents’ educational background. Last, applying the results of the first two steps to a more-generation model by Dustmann and Glitz (2011), we estimate the educational assimilation process