Working Paper: NBER ID: w11924
Authors: Ebonya Washington
Abstract: Economists have long concerned themselves with environmental influences, such as neighborhood, peers and family on individuals' beliefs and behaviors. However, the impact of children on parents' behavior has been little studied. Parenting daughters, psychologists have shown, increases feminist sympathies. I test the hypothesis that children, much like neighbors or peers, can influence adult behavior. I demonstrate that the propensity to vote liberally on reproductive rights is significantly increasing in a congress person's proportion of daughters. The result demonstrates not only the relevance of child to parent behavioral influence, but also the importance of personal ideology in a legislator's voting decisions as it is not explained away by voter preferences.
Keywords: Daughters; Voting Behavior; Legislators; Women's Issues; Reproductive Rights
JEL Codes: H0; J16; D72
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| proportion of daughters (J12) | propensity to vote liberally on women's issues (J16) |
| proportion of daughters (J12) | voting score on women's issues (J16) |
| having one daughter (J12) | voting score on women's issues (J16) |
| having two daughters (J12) | voting score on women's issues (J16) |
| proportion of daughters (J12) | voting behavior on reproductive rights (K16) |