Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP18515
Authors: Jacob Brown; Enrico Cantoni; Sahil Chinoy; Martin Koenen; Vincent Pons
Abstract: We ask how childhood environment shapes political behavior. We measure young voters’ participation and party affiliation in nationally comprehensive voter files and reconstruct their childhood location histories based on their parents’ addresses. We compare outcomes of individuals who moved between the same origin and destination counties but at different ages. Those who spend more time in the destination are more influenced by it: Growing up in a county where their peers are 10 percentage points more likely to become Republicans makes them 4.7 percentage points more likely to become Republican themselves upon entering the electorate. The effects are of similar magnitude for Democratic partisanship and turnout. These exposure effects are primarily driven by teenage years, and they persist but decay after the first election. They reflect both state-level factors and factors varying at a smaller scale such as peer effects.
Keywords: Political behavior; Voter turnout
JEL Codes: D72; P00
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Exposure effects during teenage years (I12) | Persist but decay after the first election (C41) |
| Political behavior of individuals who moved earlier (D72) | More aligned with that of permanent residents in their new counties (R23) |
| Experiences during the teenage years (J13) | Drive exposure effects primarily (C99) |
| Growing up in a county where peers are 10 percentage points more likely to become Republicans (C92) | Increases an individual's likelihood of registering as a Republican by 47.2 percentage points upon entering the electorate (K16) |
| 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of permanent residents participating in elections (K16) | Corresponds to a 47.5 percentage point increase in individual turnout (D79) |