Ethnic Enclaves and Cultural Assimilation

This paper studies whether growing up in an ethnic enclave slows down immigrants’ cultural assimilation. To measure cultural behavior, I rely on individual-level administrative data on drug usage and focus on a culturally charged consumption: the usage of hormonal contraceptives by young immigrant women. To provide causal estimates of neighborhood influence, I exploit the quasi-random allocation of asylum seekers to government housing in the Netherlands between 1996 and 2012. While there is evidence of cultural assimilation over time, it is slow and cannot be accelerated by limiting the formation of ethnic enclaves.