The Effect of Randomized School Admissions on Voter Participation
40 Pages Posted: 22 Dec 2006 Last revised: 25 Mar 2022
Date Written: November 2005
Abstract
There is little causal evidence on the effect of economic and policy outcomes on voting behavior. This paper uses randomized outcomes from a school choice lottery to examine if lottery outcomes affect voting behavior in a school board election. We show that losing the lottery has no significant impact on overall voting behavior; however, among white families, those with above median income and prior voting history, lottery losers were significantly more likely to vote than lottery winners. Using propensity score methods, we compare the voting of lottery participants to similar families who did not participate in the lottery. We find that losing the school choice lottery caused an increase in voter turnout among whites, while winning the lottery had no effect relative to non-participants. Overall, our empirical results lend support to models of expressive and retrospective voting, where likely voters are motivated to vote by past negative policy outcomes.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating
By Brian Jacob and Steven D. Levitt
-
By Paul Glewwe, Nauman Ilias, ...
-
By Brian Jacob
-
Winning Isn't Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling
By Mark Duggan and Steven D. Levitt
-
The Market for Teacher Quality
By Eric A. Hanushek, John F. Kain, ...
-
Food for Thought: The Effects of School Accountability Plans on School Nutrition
By David N. Figlio and Joshua Winicki
-
The Central Role of Noise in Evaluating Interventions that Use Test Scores to Rank Schools
By Kenneth Y. Chay, Patrick J. Mcewan, ...
-
Does School Accountability Lead to Improved Student Performance?