Does a Passport Get You a Degree? Citizenship Reform and Educational Achievement

Celina Proffen and Franziska Riepl

No 11483, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of introducing birthright citizenship in Germany on the educational trajectories of second-generation immigrants. Our identification strategy exploits a legal change in 2000 that granted children of foreigners with longtime residency automatic citizenship at birth. Using high-quality census data, we show that the reform contributes to closing pre-existing educational gaps in secondary school track choice and completion. These findings also hold when relying exclusively on within-household variation across siblings. We provide evidence for the underlying mechanisms, highlighting the roles of higher expected returns to education and of an increased sense of belonging to Germany.

Keywords: birthright citizenship; education; human capital; integration; immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 K37 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11483

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