Naturalization and the transition to homeownership: an analysis of signalling in the Dutch housing market

This article pioneers in investigating a citizenship premium for homeownership of first-generation immigrants, using Dutch register data from Statistics Netherlands (N ¼ 106,187). I hypothesize that naturalization favourably influences the risk-calculation of lenders through positive signalling among employed migrants, who are likely to meet the basic financial criteria for credit. Results confirm that, all else constant, employed immigrants who have naturalized are 26% more likely to be homeowner. Additional analyses specifically designed to isolate endogeneity bias show that the effect is sm... Mehr ...