IAB-SOEP Migration Sample

In cooperation with the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg, the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) has carried out the largest expansion in the number of respondents with a migration background in its 30-year history. In early summer 2013, more than 2,500 households were interviewed by specially trained interviewers from the survey institute TNS Infratest Sozialforschung. These households included at least one person who had immigrated to Germany, or whose parent had immigrated, or who held foreign citizenship.

The first samples (M1, M2, and M8) were drawn from the IAB’s Integrated Employment Biographies (IEB) dataset, which includes all individuals who have at some point been employed in Germany, registered as unemployed or seeking work, or received benefits such as Unemployment Benefit I or II. This sampling approach ensures comprehensive representation of people with a migration background who participate in the labor market, as well as their family members living in Germany. Additional samples (M10 and M11) were drawn from municipal population registration records.

The first wave of the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample was made available to researchers for secondary data analyses in late summer 2014. Since then, this and all subsequent waves of the sample have been integrated into the SOEP-Core dataset (see: Information on the integrated dataset).