Moved to Vote: The Long-Run Effects of Neighborhoods on Political Participation

The Long-Run Effects of School Racial Diversity on Political Identity

“…Overall, these findings complement an emerging set of studies that provide causal evidence that circumstance and events in early life affect political behavior. Recent studies have demonstrated that family income, educational interventions and neighborhoods matter for voting (Sondheimer and Green, 2010;Akee et al, 2018;Holbein, 2017;Chyn and Haggag, 2019). Our work is distinguished by the fact that we find evidence of effects on partisanship rather than voter turnout.…”

“…For example, Jennings et al ( 2009) use a 7-point Party Identification survey measure and find a correlation of 0.37 between parents and their children in their late 20s in 1997 (they also find a correlation of 0.33 in a binary self-report of Presidential vote choice). While two recent studies estimate the intergenerational correlation in voter turnout using voter files (Akee et al, 2018;Chyn and Haggag, 2019), to our knowledge, there are no estimates of intergenerational partisan identity transmission using administrative data. As described in Section 3, we matched children to a parent using North Carolina birth records.…”

“…First, recent studies have provided causal evidence that circumstances and early-life events matter for political behavior. 8,9 For example, studies have shown long-run effects on voting due to education-related interventions (Sondheimer and Green, 2010;Holbein, 2017), income transfers (Akee et al, 2018) and relocating to less disadvantaged neighborhoods (Chyn and Haggag, 2019). 10 Second, a large literature has studied the "contact hypothesis" (Allport, 1954) which posits that social contact with out-group members can reduce discrimination.…”

“…Recent work has innovated by placing greater emphasis on identification of causal impacts. For example, several studies have employed quasi-experimental methods and found that changes in family income (Akee et al, 2018) and neighborhood relocation (Chyn and Haggag, 2019) have important impacts on later-life voting. 4 Relatively fewer studies have produced credible estimates of causal impacts of early-life conditions on partisanship.…”

Love Thy (Elected) Neighbor? Residential Segregation, Political Representation, and Local Public Goods

“…For example, a number of recent papers have documented that childhood neighborhood context has a causal effect on various adulthood outcomes (see e.g. Damm and Dustmann 2014, Chetty et al 2016, Chyn 2018, Chyn and Haggag 2019, Nakamura et al 2021, Deutscher 2020and Laliberté 2021 and intergenerational mobility Hendren 2018 andChetty et al 2020). By residing in a particular neighborhood, people choose not only their neighbors and peers, but also the local public goods they are able to consume.…”