Granting Birthright Citizenship – A Door Opener for Immigrant Children's Educational Participation and Success?

Does birthright citizenship boost immigrant children's educational participation and success? We address this question relying on a reform of the German naturalization law in 1999 that entitled children born after January 1, 2000 to birthright citizenship. We isolate the impact of birthright citizenship by comparing children born shortly before and shortly after the cutoff in years of policy change and years in which no policy change took place. Results based on administrative data indicate positive effects across all educational levels – preschool, primary school and secondary school – which, however, fade out over time. The underlying mechanism seems to be parental decisions and not improved (evaluations of) children's skills.