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Schooling and voter turnout : is there an American exception?
Author(s)
Date Issued
2012-04
Date Available
2012-05-09T15:43:13Z
Abstract
One of the most consistent findings in studies of electoral behaviour is that individuals with higher education have a greater propensity to vote. The nature of this relationship is much debated, with US studies generally finding evidence of a causal relationship, while European studies generally reporting no causal effect. To assess whether the US is an exception we rely on an international dataset incorporating 38 countries, the ISSP
(International Social Survey Programme) from 1985 to 2010. Both instrumental variable
and multi-level modelling approaches reveal that the US is an outlier regarding the
relationship between education and voter turnout. Moreover country-specific institutional and economic factors do not explain the heterogeneity in the relationship of interest. Alternatively, we show that disenfranchisement laws in the U.S. mediates the effect of education on voter turnout, such that the education gradient in voting is greater in U.S.
States with the harshest disenfranchisement legislature. As such, the observed relationship between education and voting is partly driven by the effect of education on
crime.
Sponsorship
Other funder
Other Sponsorship
European Science Foundation’s Human Values, Institutions and Behaviour (HumVIB)program “Cross-national and Multi-level Analysis of Human Values, Institutions and Behaviour
Type of Material
Working Paper
Publisher
University College Dublin. School of Economics
Series
UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series
WP12/13
Subject – LCSH
Voting research
Educational attainment
Suffrage
Web versions
Language
English
Status of Item
Not peer reviewed
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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