Ethnic diversity and political participation: the role of individual income

Giorgio Bellettini, Carlotta Berti Ceroni and Chiara Monfardini

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: We exploit a unique dataset merging data on individual socio-economic characteristics and political participation in an Italian municipality to investigate the relationship between ethnic diversity in residential neighborhoods and individuals' propensity to vote. We document a sizable negative impact of diversity on overall electoral turnout which reects differential effects at the individual level, depending on household equivalent income. Speciffically, we show that ethnic heterogeneity in the neighborhood reduces the political participation of the poor, while it fosters that of the more affluent. These results highlight a potential democratic deficit stemming from reduced and unequal electoral turnout in increasingly ethnically heterogeneous neighborhoods.

JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-pol, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/5736/1/WP1114.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Ethnic Diversity and Political Participation: The Role of Individual Income (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp1114

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().