Beschreibung:
Displaced children often face educational disadvantages in their host countries. Statelessness might be one of the factors limiting educational access, but research on this aspect is limited. In this paper, I leverage the introduction of birthright citizenship for Venezuelan children in Colombia to analyze the effect of ending statelessness on educational participation during early childhood. I employ a difference-in-discontinuity strategy that exploits a birthdate and policy cutoff to determine whether a Venezuelan child became eligible for birthright citizenship or not. I find that the reform has positive effects on the participation rates of children below six years old. I explain these results by demand- and supply-side factors faced by displaced parents and their children.