 Elections and unemployment benefits for families: Did the Family Benefit Dispute affect election outcomes in Germany?Armin Hackenberger, Marian Rümmele, Jakob Schwerter and Miriam Sturm European Journal of Political Economy, 2021, vol. 66, issue C Abstract: Underlying reasons for certain voting outcomes are subject to a vivid debate – especially in times of landslide changes in voting outcomes of long-established parties in many European countries including Germany. The linkages between these voting outcomes and economic indicators are rather elusive since many confounding and unobservable aspects determine voting decisions. Exploiting a quasi-natural experiment resulting from a legislation change in the German state of Bavaria that effectively increased family benefits for unemployment benefit recipients in certain districts, we try to identify the effect of this legislation on voting outcomes in the Bavarian state election of 2018. While we do not find a significant effect on general election outcomes in the affected districts, our results imply that the general debate seems to have affected the voting behavior of families with unemployment benefits and children under the age of three. Keywords: Election; Unemployment benefits; Family benefits; Germany; Difference-in-Differences (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:66:y:2021:i:c:s0176268020301038 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101955 Access Statistics for this article European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier |
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