Comparing the Risk Attitudes of Internationally Mobile and Non-Mobile Germans

Moving–particularly to a new country–is fraught with risks as migrants leave familiar legal frameworks and cultural institutions behind them. To date, little is known about the psychological determinants of international migration. This chapter helps to fill this gap by analysing data from the first wave of the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) in combination with data on non-mobile individuals from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). The analyses presented examine whether the risk attitudes of internationally mobile Germans (‘movers’) differ from those of their non-mobile counterparts (‘stayers’). The results show that–with control for key socio-demographic and socio-economic determinants of risk affinity–both emigrants and remigrants report a significantly higher willingness to take risks than stayers. Risk affinity differs within the group of internationally mobile individuals: Emigrants moving to geographically and culturally distant non-European countries report higher risk affinity than those moving to Germany’s neighbouring countries. Emigrants with multiple previous emigration periods are also more willing to take risks. These findings suggest that voluntary emigration from wealthy countries like Germany is only partly a matter of living conditions. Rather, (repeated) emigration seems to be a matter of personality and an expression of a more adventurous lifestyle.