Policies·dk_24_year_rule_2002

24-year rule and attachment requirement (Udlaendingeloven 2002)

DNK·2002 – ·enacted 2002-07-01·V-K minority, DF supportcandidate

movesimmigration openness↓transfer expansion↓

What the policy did

Amendments to Udlaendingeloven requiring both spouses to be at least 24 years old for family reunification, plus an 'attachment requirement' that the couple's combined ties be stronger to Denmark than to any other country. Also introduced a 7-year permanent-residence threshold and benefit restrictions (starthjaelp) for new arrivals.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended

↓

immigration openness

regulatory.immigration_openness

Immigration policy openness — work visas, family reunification, asylum processing, border enforcement posture.

decreased · strong

more restrictive (lower caps, tighter enforcement)

24-year rule and attachment requirement materially reduced non-EU family reunification.

↓

transfer expansion

fiscal.transfer_expansion

Size of cash and near-cash transfer programmes (unemployment benefits, means-tested assistance, universal child benefits). Architecturally distinct from forced-saving schemes — see condition welfare_architecture.

decreased · weak

smaller transfer footprint

Starthjaelp benefit-floor reduction for new arrivals.

Enacted by

denmark_fogh_rasmussen_v_2001_2009

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

Large-scale universal or near-universal transfer programmes produce a three-order causal chain.

universal_transfer_programmes_labour_force_participation_declineinferred

viafiscal.transfer_expansion

partial — Prime-age LFP fell by ≥1.0pp in 2/5 cases (threshold for SUPPORTED: ≥3). First-order improved in 3/4 cases. Mixed: consistent with the spec's design-d…

partial

Universal single-payer healthcare systems (NHS, Canadian Medicare) produce lower per-capita healthcare expenditure with equal or better life-expectancy outcomes than the US multi-payer system.

single_payer_cost_outcome_comparisoninferred

viafiscal.transfer_expansion

supported_subset — cost test PASSES (USA per-capita PPP $10957 vs GBR/CAN mean $5663, ratio 1.93x > 1.5); single-payer matched-or-beat USA on 4/5 tested outcome…

supported

The net fiscal contribution of immigrants (taxes paid minus public services + transfers received, measured in lifetime NPV terms) varies systematically by (a) origin-country institutional quality, (b) skill level at arrival, (c) age at arrival, (d) duration of residence, and (e) legal status (working-age visa / family reunification / asylum).

immigration_net_fiscal_contribution_by_origin_skill_durationinferred

viaregulatory.immigration_opennessfiscal.transfer_expansion

SUPPORTED — coef=-1.127 (sign matches claim -), p=0.0206

supported

UK post-1945 Attlee reforms (NHS, nationalisation of coal/rail/steel, expanded public housing) delivered measurable improvements in life expectancy and child mortality without undermining subsequent 1950s-1960s growth.

uk_attlee_reforms_output_health_outcomesinferred

viafiscal.transfer_expansion

refuted — Only 0 of 3 primaries hold. Failed: life-expectancy, infant-mortality, 1950s growth. UK 1950s growth +1.69%/yr; LE gain +3.29y (peer-mean +4.45y); IMR…

refuted

Italy's Reddito di Cittadinanza (RdC, March 2019) reduced absolute-poverty headcount among low-income Italian households by at least 15% within three years (2019-2022) but produced no measurable improvement in employment-rate among working-age beneficiaries, identified off the synthetic-control gap with EU peers (ESP, GRC, PRT) lacking comparable means-tested guaranteed-minimum-income programmes pre-2020.

welfare_transfer_italy_reddito_cittadinanza_effectinferred

viafiscal.transfer_expansion

PARTIAL — mean_gap=+188.4, |gap|/pre_sd=4.3, p_perm=0.8 (gap below 0.5×pre_sd or placebo p≥0.10)

partial

The American Rescue Plan Act (March 2021) expansion of the Child Tax Credit to USD 3000-3600 per child with full refundability and monthly disbursement (July-December 2021) produced a measurable and immediate decline in monthly child-poverty rate of at least 4 percentage points (Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia time-series), with the credit's December 2021 expiration producing a corresponding immediate reversal — providing high-frequency event-window evidence on near-instantaneous cash-transfer-to-poverty mechanics.

welfare_transfer_us_arpa_expanded_ctc_2021inferred

viafiscal.transfer_expansion

WEAKENED - SPM child poverty fell 4.5pp and rebounded 7.2pp; monthly CPSP and parental-LFP gates are not loaded

refuted

Universal Basic Services provision (UK post-war, Nordic) delivers equivalent wellbeing outcomes to consumption-based equivalents at lower material-throughput levels.

ubs_material_throughput_efficiencyinferred

viafiscal.transfer_expansion

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'ubs_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

run pending

The labour-supply dis-employment elasticity of negative-income-tax (NIT) and earned-income-tax-credit (EITC) -style cash-transfer programmes is materially smaller than the canonical mid-1970s NIT- experiment headline estimates suggested.

friedman_negative_income_tax_labour_supply_smaller_than_predictedinferred

viafiscal.transfer_expansion

PARTIAL — ATT=+20.8, p=nan, N=53, treated_countries=1 (above α=0.10)

partial

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

Austrian 2015-2016 refugee reception and Obergrenze

AUT·2015

match

1.3

immigration opennessimmigration openness

Integrationsydelse + contanthjælpsloft — Danish cash-benefit tightening 2015-2016

DNK·2015

match

1.3

transfer expansionimmigration openness

Immigration Tightening 2024

FIN·2023