Reinhard Schunck

Pathways between perceived discrimination and health among immigrants: evidence from a large national panel survey in Germany

Objective. Discrimination is an important determinant of health, and its experience may contribute to the emergence of health inequalities between immigrants and nonimmigrants. We examine pathways between perceived discrimination and health among immigrants in Germany: (1) whether perceptions of discrimination predict self-reported mental and physical health (SF-12), or (2) whether poor mental and physical health predict perceptions of discrimination, and (3) whether discrimination affects physical health via mental health. Design. Data on immigrants come from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from the years 2002 to 2010 (N = 8,307), a large national panel survey. Random and fixed effects regression models have been estimated. Results. Perceptions of discrimination affect mental and physical health. The effect of perceived discrimination on physical health is mediated by its effect on mental health. Our analyses do not support the notion that mental and physical health predict the subsequent reporting of discrimination. Different immigrant groups are differentially exposed to perceived discrimination. Conclusion. In spite of anti-discrimination laws, the health of immigrants in Germany is negatively affected by perceived discrimination. Differential exposure to perceived discrimination may be seen as a mechanism contributing to the emergence of health inequalities in Germany.

Different contexts, different effects? Work time and mental health in the United States and Germany.

This paper takes a comparative approach to the topic of work time and health, asking whether weekly work hours matter for mental health. We hypothesize that these relationships differ within the United States and Germany, given the more regulated work time environments within Germany and the greater incentives to work long hours in the United States. We further hypothesize that German women will experience greatest penalties to long hours. We use data from the German Socioeconomic Panel and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine hours effects on mental health score at midlife. The results support our initial hypothesis. In Germany, longer work time is associated with worse mental health, while in the United States, as seen in previous research, the associations are more complex. Our results do not show greater mental health penalties for German women and suggest instead a selection effect into work hours operating by gender.

Immigrant Integration, Transnational Activities and the Life Course

Transnationalism refers to the increased interlinkage between people all around the world and the loosening of boundaries between countries. With respect to migration, transnationalism describes immigrants’ engagement in economic, socio-cultural, and political activities across borders.

Macht Ungerechtigkeit krank? Gesundheitliche Folgen von Einkommens(un)gerechtigkeit

Theoretical research on inequity and social justice as well as experimental research indicate that perceived injustice may cause stress and thus may have negative effects on health. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) of the years 2005 to 2011, this study investigates if perceptions of earnings (un)fairness impact employees’ health. The analyses show that a change in the justice evaluation of one’s earnings coincides with a change in one’s health: Earnings that are evaluated as unjustly low are associated with a decline in subjective health. The analysis indicates that this effect is not due to respondents’ actual earnings or occupational position, but that the perception of one’s earnings as unjustly low appears to have an independent effect on respondents’ health. The study, moreover, shows that low-skilled employees, employees in temporary employment, and those with low gross hourly wages are particularly prone to perceive their earnings as unjustly low.

Ökonomische Selbstständigkeit von Migranten in Deutschland: Effekte der sozialen Einbettung in Nachbarschaft und Haushalt Self-Employment of Immigrants in Germany: Effects of Social Embeddedness within Neighborhood and Household

Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag untersucht mit Daten des Mikrozensus 2004 den Einfluss sozialer Einbettung auf die ökonomische Selbstständigkeit von Migranten in Deutschland. Für Migranten ist die Selbstständigkeit in vielen Aufnahmeländern ein wichtiger Modus der ökonomischen Integration. In Deutschland war die unternehmerische Aktivität von Migranten bis Ende der 1990er Jahre eher schwach ausgeprägt, seither steigen die Selbstständigenquoten von Migranten jedoch deutlich. In unserer Analyse von Pseudo-Paneldaten des Mikrozensus werden Statusübergänge in die Selbstständigkeit sowie Abstromprozesse aus der Selbstständigkeit untersucht. Ausgehend vom Konzept der „mixed embeddedness“ legen wir besonderes Augenmerk auf Effekte der sozialen Einbettung in Nachbarschaft und Haushalt. Die Analysen zeigen, dass sozialökologische Bedingungen für Gründungen und Überlebenschancen der Unternehmen von Migranten bedeutsam sind. Insbesondere wohlhabende Nachbarschaften mit einer hohen Konzentration von Migranten sind durch eine hohe Gründungsintensität, aber auch durch ein erhöhtes Risiko der Unternehmensaufgabe gekennzeichnet. Darüber hinaus zeigt sich, dass die ökonomische Aktivität in der Nachbarschaft sowohl Gründungen fördert als auch Unternehmensaufgaben entgegen wirkt. Summary This paper examines the effect of social embeddedness on migrants’ self-employment in Germany using data from the 2004 microcensus. In many receiving countries, self-employment is an important mode of economic integration. Yet, in Germany the level of entrepreneurial activities among immigrants has been comparably low. Since the end of the 1990ies, however, self-employment rates among immigrants have been rising. Using the pseudo-panel structure of the microcensus, our analysis focuses on transitions into and out of self-employment. Using the “mixed embeddedness” concept as a theoretical frame, we analyze how an actor’s embeddedness in the neighborhood and the household influences the transition process. Our analysis shows that ecological conditions do indeed significantly affect the founding and survival chances of immigrant businesses. In particular, within wealthy neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrants, we find a high turnover of businesses with many launchings and cessations. Furthermore, the neighborhood’s economic activity increases the frequency of business launching and decreases business cessation.

Associations Between the Big Five Personality Traits and the Non-Medical Use of Prescription Drugs for Cognitive Enhancement

While the number of studies of the non-medical use of prescription drugs to augment cognitive functions is growing steadily, psychological factors that can potentially help explain variance in such pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement (CE) behavior are often neglected in research. This study investigates the association between the Big Five personality traits and a retrospective (prior CE-drug use) as well as a prospective (willingness to use CE drugs) measure of taking prescription drugs with the purpose of augmenting ones cognitive functions (e.g., concentration, memory, or vigilance) without medical necessity. We use data from a large representative survey of German employees (N = 6454, response rate = 29.8%). The Five Factor Model (FFM) of Personality was measured with a short version of the Big Five Personality Traits Inventory (BFI-S), which includes: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Together with this, demographic variables such as gender, age, education, and income were used as potential confounders in multiple logistic regression models. Our results show a 2.96% lifetime prevalence of CE-drug use and a 10.45% willingness to (re)use such drugs in the future. We found that less conscientious and more neurotic respondents have a higher probability of prior CE-drug use and a greater willingness to use CE drugs in the future. No significant effects were found for openness, extraversion, or agreeableness. Prior CE-drug use was strongly associated with a greater willingness to take such drugs in the future. This study shows that specific personality traits are not only associated with prior enhancement behavior, but also affect the willingness to (re)use such drugs. It helps increase understanding of the risk factors of CE-drug use, which is a health-related behavior that can entail severe side-effects for consumers. The knowledge gathered can thus help improve interventions aimed at minimizing health problems.

Unemployment and Smoking: Causation, Selection, or Common Cause? - Evidence from Longitudinal Data

Background: This study investigates possible mechanisms that can explain the association between unemployment and smoking, that is a) unemployment increases smoking probability (causation), b) smoking increases the probability to become unemployed (selection), and c) differences in both smoking and unemployment probabilities trace back to differences in socio-economic position (common cause). Methods: Longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from the years 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 were used to examine the effect of unemployment on smoking probability and vice versa (65,823 observations from 18,735 respondents, aged 18-60 years). Effects were estimated by using random and fixed effects logistic panel regressions. Results: Results from the random effects logistic regression model suggest that unemployed have a higher probability to smoke and that smokers have a higher probability to become unemployed. However, the fixed effects models indicate that the observed associations are driven by unobserved factors. Results indicate that both smoking and unemployment probability co-vary systematically with (childhood) socio-economic position. Conclusion: In contrast to previous studies, the present investigation suggests that there is neither a direct causal effect of unemployment on smoking behaviour nor a direct effect of smoking on unemployment probability. Rather, smoking and unemployment seem to be related through a common cause, with people from low socio-economic backgrounds being more likely to smoke as well as to become unemployed. These findings are interpreted in the frame of a life course perspective on the development of socially unequal health behaviours.

Effect of Length of Stay on Smoking among Turkish and Eastern European Immigrants in Germany—Interpretation in the Light of the Smoking Epidemic Model and the Acculturation Theory

Background: We analyzed changes in smoking by length of stay among immigrants in Germany and related them to the “smoking epidemic” model and the acculturation theory. Methods: We used data from a longitudinal survey (German Socio-economic Panel). Immigrants were identified by country of birth (Turkey: respondents n = 828, observations n = 3871; Eastern Europe: respondents n = 2009, observations n = 7202; non-immigrants: respondents n = 34,011, observations n = 140,701). Smoking status data was available for nine years between 1998 and 2012. Length of stay (LOS, in years) was used as proxy for acculturation. We calculated smoking prevalences, prevalence ratios and a random intercept multilevel logistic regression model. Results: With each year spent in Germany, smoking prevalence increases among Turkish women (OR = 1.14 (95%CI = 1.06–1.21)) and slightly decreases among men. Recently immigrated Turkish women smoke less than non-immigrant women (0–5 years: SPR = 0.25 (95%CI = 0.10–0.57)); prevalences converge with increasing LOS (31+ years: SPR = 1.25 (95%CI = 1.06–1.48)). Among Eastern European immigrants no significant changes were apparent. Conclusions: Immigrants from Turkey “import” their smoking prevalence from a country which is in the earlier stages of the “smoking epidemic”. With increasing LOS (thus, advancing acculturation), they “move” to the later stages. Anti-smoking interventions should consider different smoking attitudes in Turkey/Germany and need to discourage women from initiating smoking. Future research should also identify reasons for the possible differences between immigrant groups.

Education systems, school segregation, and second-generation immigrants’ educational success: Evidence from a country-fixed effects approach using three waves of PISA:

Many countries are increasingly being challenged to integrate their growing immigrant populations. A major key to successful integration is the educational attainment of immigrant offspring. According to the results of comparative studies, second-generation immigrant students often lag behind their non-immigrant counterparts even though the host countries perform very differently with respect to the education of immigrant offspring. This study investigates how the interplay between the degrees of stratification and standardization in education systems and the degree of ethnic school segregation affects the performance gap between non-immigrant and second-generation immigrant students in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Based on data from three waves of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study (2003, 2006, and 2009), this article presents a country fixed effects approach to analyzing repeated cross-sectional data by investigating how changes in education policies and institutional contexts are associated with non-immigrant–immigrant reading performance gap. Between-school stratification was associated with lower performance of second-generation immigrants relative to native students, particularly when paired with ethnic school segregation, whereas within-school stratification (ability grouping) was associated with higher relative performance of the immigrant students. In addition, the non-native students benefited from less standardization of educational input, because performance gaps were smaller when a country’s educational resources were distributed unequally.

Transnational Activities and Immigrant Integration in Germany

This chapter contextualizes the German case, gives a brief history of the German immigration experience in the second half of the twentieth century, and provides a descriptive account on the extent to which immigrants in Germany engage in transnational activities.