TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Hainmueller, Jens
AU  - Cascardi, Elisa
AU  - Hotard, Michael
AU  - Koslowski, Rey
AU  - Lawrence, Duncan
AU  - Yasenov, Vasil
AU  - Laitin, David D.
        TI  - Does Access to Citizenship Confer Socio-Economic Returns? Evidence from a Randomized Control Design
        PY  - 2023/May/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 16173
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp16173
        AB  - Based on observational studies, conventional wisdom suggests that citizenship carries economic benefits. We leverage a randomized experiment from New York where low-income registrants who wanted to become citizens entered a lottery to receive fee vouchers to naturalize. Voucher recipients were about 36 p.p. more likely to naturalize. Yet, we find no discernible effects of access to citizenship on several economic outcomes, including income, credit scores, access to credit, financial distress, and employment. 
Leveraging a multi-dimensional immigrant integration index, we similarly find no measurable effects on non-economic integration. However, we do find that citizenship reduces fears of deportation. Explaining our divergence from past studies, our results also reveal evidence of positive selection into citizenship, suggesting that observational studies of citizenship are susceptible to selection bias.
        KW  - citizenship
KW  - naturalization
KW  - immigrant integration
        ER  -