Content characteristics
Topics
Migration history:
Year of immigration; migration history; social networks, information channels and barriers of migration, reasons to come to Germany
Education history:
highest obtained schooling and vocational degrees; years of schooling; education acquired at home and abroad; acknowledgement procedure of foreign credentials; language proficiency
Employment history:
Employment; self-employment; unemployment in Germany and in foreign countries
Labour market background:
Earnings; full- and part-time employment; working hours; benefit assistance, reservation wage; participation in active labour market policies
Return migration:
Return migration intensions; return migration; limited survey of returned immigrants
Miscellaneous:
Remittances to home countries; life satisfaction; risk preferences; social integration and acceptance
Data unit
Anchor persons: Persons registered at the federal employment agency the first time after 1994 who immigrated to Germany themselves or who are children/grandchildren of immigrants. M8a & M8b samples: non-EU migrants for which the Federal Employment Agency has granted permission for taking up employment. Family members: All Family members of anchor persons over 16 years.
Number of cases
Wave 1: 4964 persons in 2723 households
Wave 2: 3752 persons in 2021 households
Wave 3: 4770 persons in 2768 households
Wave 4: 3832 persons in 2155 households
Wave 5: 3408 persons in 1913 households
Wave 6: 2962 persons in 1692 households
Wave 7: 2515 persons in 1424 households
Wave 8: 4383 persons in 3177 households
Wave 9: 2151 persons in 1476 households
Wave 10: 4415 persons in 3477 households
Period covered
Wave 1: Year 2013
Wave 2: Year 2014
Wave 3: Year 2015
Wave 4: Year 2016
Wave 5: Year 2017
Wave 6: Year 2018
Wave 7: Year 2019
Wave 8: Year 2020
Wave 9: Year 2021
Wave 10: Year 2022
Time reference
Date of survey, migration biography retrospectively since their first migration from country of birth to another country, retrospective questions on life course
Regional structure
German federal state (Bundesland)
Territorial allocation
As of date of survey
Methodological characteristics
Method of data collection
The initial sample, which was surveyed for the first time in 2013, was drawn from all individuals in the IEB data that have appeared there for the first time after 1994. Clusters were formed using geocoded data from the RDC of the IAB, resulting in geographical sample units (PSUs). In the next step, all people with a migration background were identified on the basis of their nationality. Among the people with German nationality, onomastics procedures were used to search for further people with a migration background. The PSUs were selected on the basis of stratified random sampling. Through a screening interview with the anchor persons, the households that meet the criteria of the sample design were identified.
In 2015 a refreshment sample has been added to the survey also selected from the IEB data. The new respondents migrated to Germany between 2009 and 2015; here certain countries were overrepresented (e.g. Bulgaria) and other countries were underrepresented (e.g. Turkey).
In order to evaluate legislative changes to facilitate the immigration and employment of skilled workers from non-EU countries, the migration sample has been expanded since the introduction of the Skilled Immigration Act 2020, within projects financed by the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. Here new subsamples of households were included with the anchor persons migrating to Germany from the EU (predominantly from Bulgaria, Polen or Rumania, M7, M8c) or a non-EU country (M8a, M8b, M8c). Whereas some of the samples were also drawn from the IEB (M8, M8c), the samples with only non-EU migrants were drawn on the basis of data from the Federal Employment Agency on approvals to take up employment.
Institutions involved
Commissioned by: Cooperation between the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and the Socio-Economic Panel Study at DIW Berlin.
Carried out by:
infas Institut für angewandte Sozialwissenschaft GmbH
Frequency of data collection
Yearly (Panel)
File format and size
STATA (several files)
File architecture
Person-related, household related and biographical datasets.
The structure of the datasets is organised as the GSOEP at DIW Berlin
>> Further information on the versions of the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample Survey Dataset.