Catalina Amuedo Dorantes, Cristina Borra and Noelia Rivera-Garrido

Fertility Implications of Family-Based Regularizations 

Abstract

 We examine the fertility impact of a change in immigration policy granting temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants based on their offspring’s nationality.  The policy, enacted in a 2011 Royal Decree in Spain, recognized the ability for undocumented parents of eligible nationalities to become temporary legal residents if they had a Spanish child.  Using data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey (2007-2016), along with a quasi-experimental approach that exploits the change in legal residency eligibility requirements, we show that the decree increased the childbearing likelihood of eligible mothers by 48 percent, increasing the overall fertility rate by 0.4 percent. 

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