EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Enfranchisement of Women and the Welfare State

Graziella Bertocchi

No 2922, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We offer a rationale for the decision to extend the franchise to women within a politico-economic model where men are richer than women, women display a higher preference for public goods, and women’s disenfranchisement carries a societal cost. We first derive the tax rate chosen by the male median voter when women are disenfranchised. Next we show that, as industrialization raises the reward to mental labor relative to physical labor, women’s relative wage increases. When the cost of disenfranchisement becomes higher than the cost of the higher tax rate which applies under universal enfranchisement, the male median voter is better off extending the franchise to women. A consequent expansion of the size of government is only to be expected in societies with a relatively high cost of disenfranchisement. We empirically test the implications of the model over the 1870-1930 period. We proxy the gender wage gap with the level of per capita income and the cost of disenfranchisement with the presence of Catholicism, which is associated with a more traditional view of women’s role and thus a lower cost. The gender gap in the preferences for public goods is proxied by the availability of divorce, which implies marital instability and a more vulnerable economic position for women. Consistently with the model’s predictions, women suffrage is affected positively by per capita income and negatively by the presence of Catholicism and the availability of divorce, while women suffrage increases the size of government only in non-Catholic countries.

Keywords: family; welfare state; culture; inequality; public goods; women suffrage; divorce (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H50 J16 N40 O11 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2007-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published - revised version published in: European Economic Review, 2011, 55 (4), 535-553

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp2922.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The enfranchisement of women and the welfare state (2011) Downloads
Working Paper: The Enfranchisement of Women and the Welfare State (2008) Downloads
Working Paper: The Enfranchisement of Women and the Welfare State (2008) Downloads
Working Paper: The Enfranchisement of Women and the Welfare State (2007) Downloads
Working Paper: The Enfranchisement of Women and the Welfare State (2007) Downloads
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:iza:izadps:dp2922

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2922