Age-period-cohort analysis of attitudes towards foreigners in Germany, 1980–2016

This chapter investigates levels of anti-immigrant attitudes in Germany between 1980 and 2016 (in East Germany between 1994 and 2016) and possible factors shaping them, both at the individual and the contextual level. In our analyses, we use ALLBUS (German General Social Survey) Data from 1980 to 2016. We first check whether the measures composing our dependent variable are invariant over time and in both parts of Germany. Second, we explore how attitudes vary over the life course, and whether changes in anti-immigrant attitudes between 1980 and 2016 can be traced back to cohort or period effects in addition to individual factors. Using state-of-the-art tests, we establish, that three of the four items measuring anti-immigrant attitudes in ALLBUS are invariant in West and in East Germany for the entire period in which they were observed. We also show that the observed trends in anti-immigrant attitudes are largely driven by individual or compositional factors, with no evidence for effects of period or cohort contextual factors.