Content area
Full Text
Polit Behav (2014) 36:877897
DOI 10.1007/s11109-013-9254-0
ORIGINAL PAPER
Mikael Persson
Published online: 17 September 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract According to conventional wisdom in political behavior research, education has a direct causal effect on political participation. However, a number of recent studies have questioned this established view by arguing that education is not a direct cause of political participation but only a proxy for other factors that are not directly related to the educational experience. This paper engages in a current debate regarding the application of matching techniques to assess whether there is a direct causal effect of education on political participation. It uses data from a British cohort study that follows everyone born during 1 week in the UK in 1970. The data includes a rich set of variables measuring factors through childhood and adolescence such as cognitive ability and family socioeconomic status. This data provides the opportunity to match on a number of important variables that are not included in the US datasets used by previous studies in the eld. Results show that after matching there are no signicant effects of education on political participation.
Keywords Political participation Education Matching Voting
Introduction
It is a widely held view that education has a direct causal effect on political participation. Education supposedly develops the relevant skills needed to understand and participate in politics, as well as increases political interest, sense
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11109-013-9254-0
Web End =10.1007/s11109-013-9254-0 ) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
M. Persson (&)
Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Box 711, 405 30 Gteborg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]: http://www.pol.gu.se/staff/mikaelpersson
Testing the Relationship Between Educationand Political Participation Using the 1970 British Cohort Study
123
878 Polit Behav (2014) 36:877897
of civic duty and concern for the importance of political participation (e.g., Lewis-Beck et al. 2008; Verba et al. 1995; Wolnger and Rosenstone 1980).
However, a number of studies question the established view by arguing that education is not a direct cause for participation but only a proxy for other factors that are not directly related to the educational experience, such as pre-adult factors like childhood cognitive ability or social network position (Berinsky and Lenz 2011; Campbell 2009; Jackson 1995; Kam...