Welfare dependency among Danish immigrants

We investigate welfare dependency and labour-market assimilation among immigrants in Denmark. Duration of stay is a major determinant of welfare dependency but labour-market assimilation patterns vary substantially across immigrants from developed and less developed countries. Late arriving immigrants depend relatively more on government transfers. This is partly attributable to the large variation in qualifications across cohorts of immigrants. Business-cycle effects appear to be considerably larger for immigrants than for natives, especially in the case of males.