Inequality of opportunity, particularly when overlaid with racial, ethnic, or cultural differences, increases the social distance between individuals, which is widely believed to limit the scope of cooperation. A central question, then, is how to bridge such divides. We study the effects of a major citizenship reform in Germany-the introduction of birthright citizenship on January 1, 2000-in terms of inter-group cooperation and social segregation between immigrant and native youth. We hypothesize that endowing immigrant children with citizenship rights levels the playing field between them and their native peers, with possible spill-overs into the domain of social interactions. Our unique setup connects a large-scale lab-in-the-field experiment based on the investment game with the citizenship reform by exploiting the quasi-random assignment of citizenship rights around its cut-off date. Immigrant youth born prior to the reform display high levels of cooperation toward other immigrants, but low levels of cooperation toward natives. The introduction of birthright citizenship caused male, but not female, immigrants to significantly increase their cooperativeness toward natives. This effect is accompanied by a near-closure of the educational achievement gap between young immigrant men and their native peers.
The youth mental health crisis has become so acute during the COVID-19 pandemic that a coalition of U.S. pediatric health experts has declared it a national emergency1. To which extent this crisis can be attributed to the pandemic or the different pandemic measures is unknown. School closures are among the most heavily debated pandemic measures, with insufficient evidence on their costs2,3,4,5. We seek to narrow this blind spot, by compiling data on the manifold school closure and re-opening strategies implemented across the federal states of Germany at the onset of the pandemic and combining it with data from a nationwide, population-based, longitudinal survey on youth mental health and the largest crisis helpline for children and adolescents. We show that prolonged school closures led to a significant deterioration in youth health-related quality of life, precipitating first signs of mental health problems. Effects were most severe among boys, less mature adolescents, and families with limited living space. Young people also increasingly sought support from crisis helplines to discuss arising family and friendship problems. Importantly, the effects persist even when abstracting from the overall strain imposed by the pandemic or further pandemic measures. Indeed, school closures explain around two thirds of the aggravation of the youth mental health crisis throughout the first pandemic wave and there is no sign for a swift recovery.
The youth mental health crisis has become so acute during the COVID-19 pandemic that a coalition of U.S. pediatric health experts has declared it a national emergency1. To which extent this crisis can be attributed to the pandemic or the different pandemic measures is unknown. School closures are among the most heavily debated pandemic measures, with insufficient evidence on their costs2,3,4,5. We seek to narrow this blind spot, by compiling data on the manifold school closure and re-opening strategies implemented across the federal states of Germany at the onset of the pandemic and combining it with data from a nationwide, population-based, longitudinal survey on youth mental health and the largest crisis helpline for children and adolescents. We show that prolonged school closures led to a significant deterioration in youth health-related quality of life, precipitating first signs of mental health problems. Effects were most severe among boys, less mature adolescents, and families with limited living space. Young people also increasingly sought support from crisis helplines to discuss arising family and friendship problems. Importantly, the effects persist even when abstracting from the overall strain imposed by the pandemic or further pandemic measures. Indeed, school closures explain around two thirds of the aggravation of the youth mental health crisis throughout the first pandemic wave and there is no sign for a swift recovery.
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