IESET.
Policies·de_fluechtlingspolitik_wir_schaffen_das_2015

2015 refugee intake and integration framework ('Wir schaffen das')

DEU·2015 2017·enacted 2015-09-04·CDU/CSU-SPD Grand Coalitioncandidate
movesimmigration opennesstransfer expansion

What the policy did

Decision not to close the German border to asylum-seekers transiting the Balkan route in late summer 2015, resulting in approximately 890,000 asylum applications in 2015 and a further ~720,000 in 2016. Subsequent legislative response: Asylpaket I (Oct 2015), Asylpaket II (Mar 2016) and Integrationsgesetz (Aug 2016) combining expanded processing capacity, safe-country-of-origin expansions, accelerated deportation of rejected claims, and labour-market access + integration- course requirements for recognised refugees. Defining political event of the Merkel third term; identified by most observers as the primary catalyst for AfD's 2017 Bundestag entry.

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.
increased · strong
more open (easier legal immigration, broader asylum)
De facto open-border posture during peak 2015-16 flow; recognition-rate spike.
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.
increased · weak
larger transfer footprint
Bund-Länder settlement increased federal transfers to Länder for integration and housing.

Enacted by

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.

References