Influx of Asylum Seekers and Local Adolescents’ Occupational Expectations: Quasi-Experimental Evidence

We investigate how local adolescents in Germany adjust their occupational expectations in response to a sudden and unprecedented influx of asylum seekers. Under German law, asylum seekers receive state support while awaiting decisions on their asylum applications, and their allocation across districts follows rules that generate quasi random regional variation. Leveraging this variation, we link survey data from the German National Educational Panel Study with regional administrative records in a difference-in-differences framework with individual fixed effects. Adolescents reacted to the influx by lowering their expectations of working in low-income occupations and by raising their expectations of entering fields dominated by women. Although the changes in expectations regarding manual or language intensive occupations are not statistically strong, adolescents generally expected occupations involving fewer manual tasks and more language-based tasks. Overall, these trends support theories related to competitive mechanisms, evolving labor demand, and comparative advantage.