Employment, Wages, and Voter Turnout

Kerwin Kofi Charles and Melvin Stephens

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2013, vol. 5, issue 4, 111-43

Abstract: Using county-level data across several decades, and various OLS and TSLS models, we find that higher local wages and employment lower turnout in elections for governor, senator, US Congress and state House of Representatives, but have no effect on presidential turnout. We also find that the share of people voting in one election but not in another on the same ballot increases as local labor market conditions improve. We argue that these results are most consistent with information-based models of voting, and use individual level panel data to show that increased employment lowers media usage and political knowledge.

JEL-codes: D72 D83 J22 J31 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.5.4.111
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/app.5.4.111 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/data/2011-0318_data.zip (application/zip)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/app/2011-0318_app.pdf (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/ds/0504/2011-0318_ds.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Employment, Wages and Voter Turnout (2011)
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:aea:aejapp:v:5:y:2013:i:4:p:111-43

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().