Spousal Visa Policy and Mixed-Citizenship Couples: Evidence from the End of the Defense Of Marriage Act

Connor Redpath

No mzuwe, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: I compare mixed-citizenship couple formation under an immigration policy granting spousal visas to one without spousal visas, by leveraging federal same-sex marriage recognition from ending the Defense of Marriage Act. I estimate changes in mixed-citizenship same-sex couple counts and marriage counts, accounting for changes in other same-sex and other mixed-citizenship couples, using a triple difference design. Spousal visa access increases mixed-citizenship coupling by 36%, and mixed-citizenship marriages by 78%. Transfer benefits, health insurance, roommates, moving, or state-level heterogeneity do not explain the results. Informal calculations suggest 1.5 million people are currently together thanks to spousal visas.

Date: 2022-02-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-ias and nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:mzuwe

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/mzuwe

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