Voting Up? The Effects of Democracy and Franchise Extension on Human Stature

Alberto Batinti, Joan Costa-i-Font and Timothy Hatton
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Joan Costa-i-Font

No 7701, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We study the health effects of the spread of democratic institutions and the extension of voting rights in 15 European countries since the middle of the nineteenth century. We employ both cross country and cohort variation in heights and employ a new instrument for democracy and the extension of the franchise, the effect of decolonisation on democracy in the colonising country’s democratisation to identify the causal effect of democracy on heights. We find robust evidence of a link between democratic quality and human stature. The results indicate that the transition to democracy increased average male heights by 0.7 to 1 cm, equivalent to a one-decade average increase in stature across cohorts. Including the extension of the franchise to women increases the effect on average stature to about 1.7cm. The effect is driven by both political participation and contestation in reducing inequality and expanding health insurance coverage.

Keywords: height; democracy; transition; voting rights expansions; franchise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H10 I10 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-his and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7701_0.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Voting Up? The Effects of Democracy and Franchise Extension on Human Stature (2022)
Working Paper: Voting up? The effects of democracy and franchise extension on human stature (2022)
Working Paper: Voting Up? The Effects of Democracy and Franchise Extension on Human Stature (2020)
Working Paper: Voting Up? The Effects of Democracy and Franchise Extension on Human Stature (2019)
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:ces:ceswps:_7701

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().