What do women want? Female suffrage and the size of government

Claudio Bravo-Ortega, Nicolas A. Eterovic and Valentina Paredes

Economic Systems, 2018, vol. 42, issue 1, 132-150

Abstract: The economic literature has attributed part of the increase in government expenditure over the 20th century to female voting. This is puzzling, considering that the political science literature has documented that women tended to be more conservative than men over the first half of the 20th century. We argue that the current estimates of this relationship are afflicted by endogeneity bias. Using data for 46 countries and a novel set of instruments related to the diffusion of female suffrage across the globe, we find that, on average, the introduction of female suffrage did not increase either social expenditures or total government expenditure.

Keywords: Female suffrage; Government size; Voting rights (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: What do women want? Female suffrage and the size of government (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecosys:v:42:y:2018:i:1:p:132-150

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecosys.2017.04.001

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