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The Effect of Education on Voter Turnout

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Steven Tenn
Steven Tenn*
Affiliation:
Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Economics, 600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20580. e-mail: stenn@ftc.gov
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Abstract

Numerous studies demonstrate that the highly educated are more likely to vote. The literature has not determined, however, why this is the case. The panel structure of the Current Population Survey allows us to exploit exogenous life cycle differences across otherwise similar cohorts, so that the marginal effect of education can be isolated from unobserved correlated factors. We find that an additional year of schooling has very little impact on voter turnout.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , Autumn 2007 , pp. 446 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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