»Poverty Risks of Ethnic Minorities«(1990-2020) – Examining trends and explaining poverty risks across ethnic origins and generation status

While previous research gained a detailed understanding of ethnic inequalities in education and the labor market, much less is known about ethnic poverty risks. In particular, there is little knowledge about the heterogeneity of trends and underlying determinants of poverty risks across many specific ethnic origin groups. This study complements the literature by providing a long-term, large-scale study, examining poverty trends over three decades (1991–2019) and determinants of poverty risks across 20 ethnic origins and two generations in Germany. With its long migration history and considerable ethnic heterogeneity, Germany is a valuable case study to understand ethnic poverty risks in Europe. Results based on long-term, large-scale, nationally representative Microcensus data indicate that third-country guest workers from Turkey and Morocco, Post-Soviet repatriates, EU asylum seekers from Kosovo/ Macedonia, and refugees from North Africa and Yugoslavia have high poverty risks, while refugees from Afghanistan, West Africa, the Middle East, Vietnam, and Iran experience exceptionally high risks. These disparities are also partially evident in the second-generation. Logistic regressions of pooled repeated cross-sections in nested, stepwise models—analyzing mediation processes and cumulative disadvantages and using average marginal effects to compare key theoretical perspectives—provide new detailed insights into the determinants of ethnic poverty risks. Lower education accounts largely for ethnic poverty differences, yet higher education does not offset risks, indicating inadequate occupational placement, especially among third-country immigrants and refugees, with disadvantages partly transmitted to their children. Precarious employment stands out as the most influential factor across generations. Household composition matters particularly for Middle Eastern, Afghan, and West African families. Citizenship is beneficial for most immigrants, especially refugees.