Passport to Progress: The Effects of Birthright Citizenship on Siblings' Education

Many western countries are currently facing three major challenges. First, they experience increasing inflows of immigrants. Secondly, in the majority of countries, immigrant children, on average, exhibit lower academic performance in comparison to their non-immigrant peers. The third challenge is the unmet demand for highly skilled labor as a consequence of demographic change. One policy that may help to tackle these challenges is the granting of citizenship to immigrant children, promoting integration and education. To provide a more thorough account of the total benefits of citizenship, I examine not only the direct effects on these immigrant children but also spillover effects on their older siblings. Event study and difference-in-differences approaches are employed, taking advantage of the implementation of birthright citizenship in Germany for children born after 2000 and comparing children born around the birthdate cut-off. Analyses using the German Microcensus and the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) provide evidence that birthright citizenship is advantageous for the education of children specifically targeted by the reform and also has positive spillover effects on the academic school track completion of their older siblings. Further analyses indicate that these spillover effects are driven by increased parental investments, particularly towards the older siblings. These findings reveal that previous assessments of citizenship have underestimated its benefits

Should Mama or Papa Work? Variations in Attitudes towards Parental Employment by Country of Origin and Child Age

Employment among mothers has been rising in recent decades, although mothers of young children often work fewer hours than other women do. Parallel to this trend, approval of maternal employment has increased, albeit not evenly across groups. However, differences in attitudes remain unexplored despite their importance for better understanding mothers' labour market behaviour. Meanwhile, the employment of fathers has remained stable and attitudes towards paternal employment do not differ as much as attitudes towards maternal employment do between socio-economic groups. This paper examines attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. It focuses on Germany, drawing on data from the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA). The survey explicitly asks whether mothers and fathers should be in paid work, work part-time or full-time, presenting respondents with fictional family profiles that vary the youngest child's age. Unlike previous studies, the analysis compares the views of respondents with different origins: West Germany, East Germany, immigrants from different world regions, and second-generation migrants in West Germany. The results highlight remarkable differences between respondents from West and East Germany, with the former group displaying strong approval for part-time employment among mothers and fathers of very young children and the latter group reporting higher approval for full-time employment. Immigrant groups are far from homogenous, holding different attitudes depending on their region of origin. Taken together, the results offer a nuanced picture of attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. We discuss these findings in relation to labour markets participation in Germany

Oma und Opa gefragt? Veränderungen in der Enkelbetreuung - Wohlbefinden von Eltern - Wohlergehen von Kindern

Die Publikation fasst die Ergebnisse eines zweijährigen Forschungsprojekts zusammen, das sich mit wichtigen Fragestellungen zu den Auswirkungen der Großelternbetreuung auf die kindliche Entwicklung beschäftigt

Does Grandparenting Pay off for the Next Generations? Intergenerational Effects of Grandparental Care

Grandparents act as the third largest caregiver after parental care and daycare in Germany, as in many Western societies. Adopting a double-generation perspective, we investigate the causal impact of this care mode on children’s health, socio-emotional behavior, and school outcomes, as well as parental well-being. Based on representative German panel data sets, and exploiting arguably exogenous variations in geographical distance to grandparents, we analyze age-specific effects, taking into account alternative care modes. Our results suggest mainly null and in few cases negative effects on children’s outcomes. If children three years and older are in full-time daycare or school and, in addition, regularly cared for by grandparents, they have more health and socio-emotional problems, in particular conduct problems. In contrast, our results point to positive effects on parental satisfaction with the childcare situation and leisure. The effects for mothers correspond to an increase of 11 percent in satisfaction with the childcare situation and 14 percent in satisfaction with leisure, compared to the mean, although the results differ by child age. While the increase in paternal satisfaction with the childcare situation is, at 21 percent, even higher, we do not find an effect on paternal satisfaction with leisure