Life Satisfaction of Immigrants: Does Cultural Assimilation Matter?

Abstract

We empirically assess the relationship between cultural assimilation and subjective well-being of immigrants by using the German Socio-Economic Panel, a longitudinal dataset including information on both the economic and non economic conditions of the respondents. We …find that the more immigrants identify with the German culture and ‡fluently speak the national language, the more they report to be satisfied with their lives. This result is robust to several potential confounding factors, including a large number of individual variables (demographic, educational, social, economic and health), labour market outcomes and the external social conditions of the immigrant.

Keywords: assimilation, identity, life-satisfaction, immigration

JEL Classification: J15, I31, Z10, F22