Life Satisfaction of Immigrants: Does Cultural Assimilation Matter?

To investigate empirically the association between a direct measure of assimilation with a host culture and immigrants’ subjective well-being, this study uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. A positive, significant association arises between cultural assimilation and immigrants’ life satisfaction, even after controlling for several potential confounding factors, such as immigrants’ individual (demographic and socio-economic) characteristics and regional controls that capture their external social conditions. Finally, the strength of the association varies with time since migration; it is significant for “established” and second-generation immigrants but vanishes for “recent” immigrants.