Water fluoridation is a common but debated public policy. In this paper, we use Swedish registry data to study the causal effects of fluoride in drinking water. We exploit exogenous variation in natural fluoride stemming from variation in geological characteristics at water sources to identify its effects. First, we reconfirm the long-established positive effect of fluoride on dental health. Second, we estimate a zero effect on cognitive ability in contrast to several recent debated epidemiological studies. Third, fluoride is furthermore found to increase labor income. This effect is foremost driven by individuals from a lower socioeconomic background.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract This paper investigates the causal link between voter turnout and policy outcomes related to the size of government. Tax rate and public expenditures are the focal policy outcomes in this study. To capture the causal mechanism, Swedish and Finnish municipal data are used and a constitutional change in Sweden in 1970 is applied as an instrument for voter turnout in local elections. In 1970, Sweden moved from having separate election days for different levels of government, among other things, to a system with a single election day for political elections, thus reducing the cost associated with voting. This constitutional reform increased voter turnout in local elections in Sweden. The overall conclusion of this paper is that higher voter turnout yields higher municipal taxes and larger local public expenditures. Second, there is some evidence that higher turnout decreases the vote share for right-wing parties. Terms of use: Documents in

Faced with rising levels of cross-border migration, many democratic countries have extended local voting rights to non-naturalized immigrants in recent decades. However, the low turnout of enfranchised immigrants in these elections has come as a disappointment to the advocates of such reforms. In this study, we examine whether the low turnout can be explained by the low salience of local elections. Based on a regression discontinuity design and using high-quality Swedish registry data, we find this to be the case. According to our results, the average likelihood of voting increases by 10-20 percentage points once immigrants become eligible to vote in national elections. We demonstrate too that this effect is not driven by the acquisition of citizenship per se, and that the individual characteristics of immigrants cannot explain their overall lower rate of voter turnout.

We investigate the intergenerational transmission of political-party affiliation within families with at least two politicians. We use Swedish registry data that covers all nominated politicians for the years 1982 to 2014, as well as their family ties. First, we demonstrate there is a strong link between individuals and their parents concerning party affiliation. We also find that this intergenerational transmission persists over generations and across siblings. Our second aim is to investigate the mechanisms behind this result, which we do by first discussing two hypotheses: the one concerns a socialization pathway, the other a materialistic one. We then bring these hypotheses to the data, and we find that the socialization pathway matters more for intergenerational transmission.

We examine how one's adult political participation is affected by having social ties to a politician during adolescence. Specifically, we estimate the long-term effect of having had a classmate during upper secondary school whose parent was running for office on future voter turnout and the likelihood of running for and winning political office. We use unique Swedish population-wide administrative data and find that students in school classes with a larger number of politically active parents are more politically active as adults, both in terms of voting and political candidacy. Our results suggest that the effect of vertical social ties is predominantly mediated * We thank seminar participants at Uppsala University, the Oslo Turnout Workshop (2017), Swepsa (2017), APSA ( 2018), and MPSA (2019) for their helpful and constructive comments. Earlier versions of this paper circulated under the titles "Do Political Acquintances Make You Politically Active?" and "The Effect of Having Peers Whose Parents Are Politicians." This research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC), grant number 683214 CONPOL, and the Swedish Research Council (VR), grant number 2017-02472.* * Although the QJPS is committed to making replication material available, this article makes use of sensitive data that cannot be publicly shared. The associated replication file contains the code needed for scholars with access to the data to fully replicate the reported result.