Growing the Civic Mind: Civic Education, Civic Behavior, and Political Institutions

Enrico Rubolino and Enrico Rubolino

No 12575, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Declining civic engagement increasingly strains welfare state institutions. This paper asks whether civic values can be shaped through early educational investments. I study Tax and School, a large-scale program implemented in Italian primary and secondary schools to promote fiscal and civic responsibility. Exploiting staggered cross-municipality adoption, I find that exposure increases students' intrinsic motivation for rule compliance and reduces antisocial behaviors, particularly in socio-economically disadvantaged contexts. These student-level responses gradually aggregate into community-level outcomes: exposed municipalities later exhibit higher voter turnout and stronger support for redistributive policies. Survey evidence points to belief updating about the value of public goods and the role of government in mitigating inequality as a central mechanism. Counterfactual simulations imply that scaling the program could attenuate the secular decline in voter turnout.

Keywords: civic capital; civic education; tax morale; political participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H26 I21 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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