IZA Discussion Paper No. 286

This Discussion Paper is issued within the framework of IZA's research area 0RELOLW\\ DQGG)OH[LELOLW\\ RII /DERUU 0DUNHWV. Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of the institute. Research disseminated by IZA may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent, nonprofit limited liability company (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) supported by the Deutsche Post AG. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. The current research program deals with (1) mobility and flexibility of labor markets, (2) internationalization of labor markets and European integration, (3) the welfare state and labor markets, (4) labor markets in transition, (5) the future of work, (6) project evaluation and (7) general labor economics. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. This paper provides a snapshot of the stock of immigrants in Germany using the 1995 wave of the 0LNUR]HQVXV with a particular emphasis on distinguishing first-and second-generation migrants. On the basis of this portrait, we draw attention to the empirically most relevant groups of immigrants and review the received literature on economic migration research in the three principal avenues of migration research. The aspect which we concentrate on in our empirical application, the welfare dependence of immigrants, is a matter of intense debate among economists and policy makers. We contrast the very moderate actual public transfer payment dependence of migrants to Germany with the perception of migrants dependence on public assistance by Germans from various population strata. Ten years after German re-unification, and more than fifty years after World War II, German society has transformed its composition to an extent that the founding fathers of postwar Germany could not have anticipated. Certainly, much of this change is a reflection of the international developments, most notably European economic and political integration, the demise of socialism in Eastern …