A low-cost information nudge increases citizenship application rates among low-income immigrants

Hotard, Michael; Lawrence, Duncan; Laitin, David D.; Hainmueller, Jens

doi:10.1038/s41562-019-0572-z

Cited by 33 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…More broadly, our results are consistent with findings from the small, but growing, literature examining the returns to policy interventions designed to lower barriers to naturalization among low-income immigrants. Previous work has demonstrated that fee vouchers and an information nudge result in substantial increases in citizenship-application rates (14,15). Here, we find similar, albeit smaller, increases from a related federal intervention that improved access to the fee waiver through the introduction of a standardized form and clear rules for eligibility.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

“…What might explain the finding that the impact of the fee waiver is concentrated among the most disadvantaged eligible LPRs? It stands to reason that the subgroup of eligible LPRs who have lower levels of education, lower incomes, and lower English skills are, if anything, less well-informed about the federal fee-waiver program compared with eligible LPRs with more resources (15). Therefore, differences in information about the fee waiver are unlikely to explain the heterogeneity in its effects on the naturalization rate.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hainmueller et al (14) found that citizenship application rates among lowincome LPRs doubled when they were awarded a voucher that paid the application fee. Hotard et al (15) showed that the naturalization rate among very-low-income LPRs increased by 30% when they were informed of their eligibility for a federal fee waiver. These studies suggest that the current application fees and lack of information about available options to waive them are active barriers for low-income LPRs in the naturalization process, contributing to low naturalization rates in the United States.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Standardizing the fee-waiver application increased naturalization rates of low-income immigrants

Yasenov

Hotard

Lawrence

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Citizenship can accelerate immigrant integration and result in benefits for both local communities and the foreign-born themselves. Yet the majority of naturalization-eligible immigrants in the United States do not apply for citizenship, and we lack systematic evidence on policies specifically designed to encourage take-up. In this study, we analyze the impact of the standardization of the fee-waiver process in 2010 by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). This reform allowed low-income immigrants eligible for citizenship to use a standardized form to have their application fee waived. We employ a difference-in-differences methodology, comparing naturalization behavior among eligible and ineligible immigrants before and after the policy change. We find that the fee-waiver reform increased the naturalization rate by 1.5 percentage points. This amounts to about 73,000 immigrants per year gaining citizenship who otherwise would not have applied. In contrast to previous research on the take-up of federal benefits programs, we find that the positive effect of the fee-waiver reform was concentrated among the subgroups of immigrants with lower incomes, language skills, and education levels, who typically face the steepest barriers to naturalization. Further evidence suggests that this pattern is driven by immigration service providers, who are well-positioned to help the most needy immigrants file their fee-waiver requests.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Standardizing the fee-waiver application increased naturalization rates of low-income immigrants

Yasenov

Hotard

Lawrence

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

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“…Because applying for the federal fee waiver requires additional steps, the researchers were concerned that interest in naturalization would not translate into actual naturalization. A previous study had found that a simple information nudge could increase naturalization rates by informing low-income immigrants that they were likely eligible for the federal fee waiver (Hotard et al 2019). In this follow-up study, we developed two enhanced nudges to see if they could have a larger e↵ect than the simple information nudge provided in the previous study.…”

Section: Application: Nudging Failures In Naturalizationsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Learning from Null Effects: A Bottom-Up Approach

Alrababa’h¹,

Williamson²,

Dillon³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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A critical barrier to generating cumulative knowledge in political science and related disciplines is the inability of researchers to observe the results from the full set of research designs that scholars have conceptualized, implemented, and analyzed. For a variety of reasons, studies that produce null findings are especially likely to be unobserved, creating biases in publicly accessible research. While several approaches have been suggested to overcome this problem, none have yet proven adequate. We propose a new model in which scholars post short “null results reports” online that summarize their research designs, findings, and interpretations. We discuss a template for these reports and illustrate their utility with two experimental studies focused on the naturalization of immigrants in the United States and attitudes toward Syrian refugees in Jordan. We conclude with a discussion of how to overcome incentive problems and inculcate a discipline-wide norm of publicizing null findings.

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“…A study by Michael Hotard and colleagues published in this issue of Nature Human Behaviour highlights the importance of understanding key individual-level decisions about migration and removing barriers that could prevent people from acting on the choices that they would prefer to make 6 . The authors conducted a trial in 2017 in which New York residents who were eligible for federal fee waivers to cover the cost of application for United States citizenship were either provided with general information about the process and referral to further assistance or were also explicitly told that they were likely eligible for a fee waiver (all participants were later informed of their eligibility).…”

Section: Decision-making and Immigrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision-making and immigration

2019

Nat Hum Behav

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A low-cost information nudge increases citizenship application rates among low-income immigrants

Cited by 33 publications

References 17 publications

Standardizing the fee-waiver application increased naturalization rates of low-income immigrants

Standardizing the fee-waiver application increased naturalization rates of low-income immigrants

Learning from Null Effects: A Bottom-Up Approach

Decision-making and immigration

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