Poverty over Generations

Project Lead: Prof. Dr. Petra Böhnke
Research Assistants: Marion Fischer-Neumann, Janina Mareike Zölch
Student Assistants: Franziska Toll, Lorenz Gaedke

Despite successful integration and improved life circumstances/situations, migrant offspring are far more affected by poverty than individuals without a migrant background, especially when these individuals have already grown up in poverty. What are the reasons for the transmission of poverty from one generation to the next? Our aim in this project is to identify and compare these underlying processes and determinants for individuals with and without a migrant background. In doing so, our emphasis lies on the role of family ties and relationships, social networks and socio-spatial context factors. We assume that that there are specific conditions associated with the situation of migrants that reinforce the inheritance of poverty over precisely these mechanisms. As a theoretical framework, we use socialization theories with an emphasis on reproduction of social inequality over generations and take migrant and relationship sociology into consideration. In the quantitative-empirical part of the project, for the first time, data about income and life circumstances of parent and child households (SOEP, pairfam) allow a general conclusion regarding the determinants about the transmission of poverty across/over generations. The qualitative part of the project expands on these conclusions through interviews with children and parents in order to detect socio-spatially embedded and antiquated family ties that are pivotal for the transmission of poverty.

Duration: 2017 – 2020
Project Lead: Prof. Dr. Petra Böhnke
Third Party Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)