ABSTRACT Do economic shocks increase labor market inequalities between immigrants and natives? The COVID-19 crisis reduced economic activity for almost all social groups, providing a recent case for answering this question. Research tends to focus on employment levels, overlooking potential inequalities in other job characteristics. Workers in Germany have largely kept their jobs, although their working hours were reduced. Using German high-frequency survey data, we analyze whether there was a difference in the reduction of hours for immigrants and immigrants’ descendants (IAD) compared to natives. Since IAD are overrepresented in both heavily affected and essential jobs, we argue that the effects may be heterogeneous across the distribution of the change in hours. As merely comparing averages would ignore this heterogeneity, we employ OLS and quantile treatment effect estimations to analyze working hours changes in the early COVID-19 crisis. Results show that IAD reduced hours more than natives. This effect is particularly pronounced at the lower end of the distribution of the change in working hours. Our findings suggest that IAD experienced economic hardship more often than natives and corroborate earlier findings of increased immigrant-native inequalities in times of crisis. This calls for further investigation of policies aimed at protecting vulnerable groups.

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that track mobility during secondary education is influenced by parental background. However, family background effects might vary due to institutional variations in the educational structure. Therefore, in our paper we compare social selectivity of track mobility in two countries, Germany and The Netherlands. Both countries offer a hierarchically tracked educational system, but differ in details. Further, both countries established educational reforms in the late sixties, changing the conditions for track mobility differently. In our empirical analyses using data from the Family Survey Dutch Population and the German Life History Study we find that changing to a higher track is more likely for students who face the threat of status demotion, whereas changing to a lower track is independent of status maintenance motives. Intra-secondary transitions occur less often in The Netherlands than in Germany and are less motivated by status maintenance. Educational legislation reduces the effects of relative education of the parents only on upward mobility in Germany and only on downward mobility in The Netherlands.