The socioeconomic returns to citizenship: A randomized controlled trial

Area of Science:

• Socioeconomic impacts of immigration
• Public policy and immigrant integration
• Randomized controlled trials in social science

Background:

• Conventional wisdom and observational studies suggest citizenship confers economic advantages.
• Immigrant naturalization is a key aspect of integration.
• Selection bias may confound observational findings on citizenship benefits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally evaluate the economic and noneconomic impacts of U.S. citizenship acquisition.
• To assess the effect of naturalization on immigrant integration and financial well-being.
• To address the potential for selection bias in prior research.

Main Methods:

• A randomized controlled trial (RCT) in New York offered fee vouchers for naturalization to eligible permanent residents.
• Voucher recipients experienced a 36 percentage point increase in naturalization rates.
• Economic outcomes (income, credit, employment) and a multidimensional integration index were measured.

Main Results:

• No statistically significant effects of citizenship on income, credit scores, access to credit, financial distress, or employment were found.
• Citizenship did not measurably improve scores on a multidimensional immigrant integration index.
• Citizenship significantly reduced immigrants' fears of deportation.

Conclusions:

• Randomized access to citizenship does not yield expected economic or integration benefits, challenging prior observational findings.
• Positive selection into citizenship, observed in the study, suggests observational research may overstate benefits due to self-selection.
• Reducing deportation fears is a significant, albeit noneconomic, benefit of citizenship.