The Effects of 9/11 on Attitudes toward Immigration and the Moderating Role of Education

2016/10/25 by Simone Schüller · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Psychology · Medicine · #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Immigration #Hostility #German #Demographic economics #Terrorism #Shock (circulatory) #Social psychology #Relevance (law) #Psychology #Population #Descriptive statistics #Political science #Economics #Sociology #Demography #Geography #Medicine

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/kykl.12122

openalex publication_date 2016/10/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Summary The 9/11 terror attacks are likely to have induced an increase in anti‐immigrant and anti‐foreigner sentiments, not only among US residents but also beyond US borders. Using unique longitudinal data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel and exploiting exogenous variation in interview timing throughout 2001, I find that the 9/11 events caused an immediate shift of around 40 percent of one within‐standard deviation to more negative attitudes toward immigration and resulted in a considerable decrease in concerns over xenophobic hostility among the German population. The quasi‐experiment 9/11 provides evidence on the relevance of non‐economic factors in attitude formation and the role of education in moderating the negative terrorism shock. Additional descriptive analysis suggests that the effects have also been persistent in the years after the attacks.

Citations

• Educated Preferences: Explaining Attitudes Toward Immigration in Europe
• The Impact of September 11th, 2001 on the Employment Prospects of Arabs and Muslims in the German Labor Market
• Perceptions of Immigrants in Australia after 9/11*
• Changes in the earnings of Arab men in the US between 2000 and 2002
• Public Opinion Toward Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations
• The Influence of Social Desirability Pressures on Expressed Immigration Attitudes*
• IMMIGRATION, WAGES, AND COMPOSITIONAL AMENITIES
• Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation
• Who Is Against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants
• The Long-run Effect of 9/11: Terrorism, Backlash, and the Assimilation of Muslim Immigrants in the West

Cited by

• The Long-run Effect of 9/11: Terrorism, Backlash, and the Assimilation of Muslim Immigrants in the West
• Opposition to immigration [wikipedia]