Until Citizenship Do Us Part? Mixed Marriages and the Timing of Divorce in Response to Nationality Laws

This paper investigates the impact of French nationality laws governing access to citizenship through marriage on strategic marital behavior. Our identication strategy exploits two key elements: European individuals experience a relatively smaller utility gain from acquiring French nationality compared to non-Europeans, and individuals who are already naturalized have no incentive to remain married for the purpose of obtaining nationality. Using a triple-dierence approach, we compare divorce rates between mixed couples involving a non-European, non-naturalized partner and those involving a non-European naturalized partner, before and after the minimum period required to apply for nationality through marriage. We nd that the former group is signicantly more likely to divorce after the eligibility threshold is passed. We further leverage the 2006 legal reform that extended the required period of marriage before applying for nationality from two to four years. Our analysis shows that, post-reform, individuals with nationality at stake tend to delay divorce until the four-year threshold is reached. These ndings suggest that nationality laws signicantly inuence marital decisions, with couples strategically timing divorce to meet legal requirements, potentially generating welfare losses. Importantly, we also verify that our results are not driven by compositionnal changes in the population of mixed marriages following the reform.