Abstract

The 2015 arrival of refugees in Europe has attracted a lot of attention in the public debate while scientifically socio-economic effects are still underexplored. In this project, we analyze the impact of wage inequality in neighborhoods on refugees‘ integration into the German labor market. We thereby draw on the GridAB, a unique, georeferenced dataset from administrative accounts that spans Germany in 1km²-grid-cells. Using this rich dataset, we apply various matching algorithms that allow us to identify the influence of the heterogeneity in the standard of living, measured in terms of wages, on the refugees’ time to start a job.