Population Aging and Individual Attitudes Toward Immigration: Disentangling Age, Cohort and Time Effects

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly.Any opinions expressed in this series are those of the author(s) and not those of DIW Berlin.Research disseminated by DIW Berlin may include views on public policy issues, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. AbstractIn the face of rising old-age dependency ratios in industrialized countries like Germany, politicians and their electorates discuss the loosening of immigration policies as one policy option to ensure the sustainability of public social security systems. The question arises whether this policy option is feasible in aging countries: older individuals are typically found to be more averse to immigration. However, crosssectional investigations may confound age with cohort effects. This investigation uses the 1999-2008 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel to separate the effect of age on immigration attitudes from cohort and also from time effects. Over the life cycle stated immigration concerns are predicted to increase well into retirement and decrease afterward. Relative to other issues, immigration concerns are found to actually decrease over the life cycle.JEL classification: D78, F22, J10

Bitterness in Life and Attitudes Towards Immigration

“…The question has been recently used also by other authors to study attitudes towards immigration (e.g. Calahorrano 2013, Lancee and Pardos-Prado 2013, Avdeenko and Siedler 2015. Given the wording and framing, the question is able to capture negative attitudes towards immigration, which are at the same time salient for the respondent (Lancee and Pardos-Prado 2013).…”

Public Opinion on Immigration: Has the Recession Changed Minds?

“…The test statistic is computed for the joint significance of the interactions; it therefore excludes any differences in the coefficients on the period dummies for the three different education groups. 13 For the UK Duffy and Frere-Smith (2014) find that those born before 1965 became more negative towards immigration over the last decade (see also Ford 2011;Calahorrano, 2013). 14 As an alternative I estimated the first stage using year of birth rather than age.…”

The dynamics of attitudes toward immigrants: Cohort analyses for Western EU member states

“…Previous studies emphasize the impact of two mechanisms of large-scale attitude change: first, cohort replacement and, second, period effects. While cohort replacement can bring about longterm attitude changes (Calahorrano, 2013;Ebner et al, 2020;Eger et al, 2021;Firebaugh, 1992;Inglehart, 1977;Kiley and Vaisey, 2020;Mannheim, 1928;Schotte and Winkler, 2018;Schuman and Corning, 2012), certain period effects are responsible for more immediate changes in societies' current opinion climates (Czymara, 2021;Heizmann and Huth, 2021;Meuleman et al, 2009;Newman and Velez, 2014;Quillian, 1995;Schneider, 2008). To date, empirical research on antiimmigrant sentiments rarely combines these two concepts simultaneously to disentangle the interplay of period and cohort effects and determine the factors for long-and short-term attitude changes in societies (Ross and Rouse, 2015;Wilkes and Corrigall-Brown, 2011).…”