Foreign-born households in the income distribution and their contribution to social indicators in European countries

This chapter provides new evidence about the relative differences in the incomes and living conditions of native- and foreign-born households exploiting EU-SILC data for 2007 and 2018. For the 28 countries with a satisfying coverage of immigrant populations, we document where the foreign-born stand along the distribution of incomes and living conditions and then derive their contribution to seven social indicators. We find that individuals living in foreign-born households have lower incomes and higher levels of poverty and deprivation in all countries examined. No clear improvement in the relative position of foreign-born households is observed between 2007 and 2018. Although there is much heterogeneity in the incomes of foreign-born households, their generally disadvantaged situation implies that, on the whole, they tend to push inequality, poverty and deprivation indicators upwards. This effect persists in many countries, albeit mitigated in magnitude, when we account for the different characteristics of foreign-born compared to natives.