Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/283472 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
BGPE Discussion Paper No. 229
Publisher: 
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE), Nürnberg
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.
Subjects: 
welfare
social assistance
intergenerational mobility
causal effect
family fixed effects
Gottschalk estimator
JEL: 
I32
I38
J62
C36
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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