Die Persistenz ethnischer Ungleichheit auf dem deutschen Arbeitsmarkt

In the German labor market former labor immigrants and their descendents still occupy lower positions. In contrast to the early phase of in-migration nowadays most of the obvious structural reasons for ethnic stratification have vanished. Therefore, remaining inequalities could either be due to processes of discrimination or may result from immigrants’ permanent under-investment in human capital. In this contribution we present theoretical arguments and empirical results why the latter mechanism seems to be more important for the situation in the German labor market. Using data of the micro-census 1996 we analyze, whether labor market positions of immigrants are still lower controlling for generation and education. The findings are rather clear-cut: nearly all labor market disadvantages of the second generation can be traced back to educational differences.