Parents, Infants, and Voter Turnout: Evidence from the United States

Angela Cools

Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2022, vol. 17, issue 1, 91-119

Abstract: Despite evidence that infants affect families' economic and social behaviors, little is known about how young children influence their parents' political engagement. I show that U.S. women with an infant during an election year are 3.5 percentage points less likely to vote than women without children; men with an infant are 2.2 percentage points less likely to vote. Suggesting that this effect may be causal, I find no significant decreases in turnout the year before parents have an infant. Using a triple-difference approach, I then show that universal vote-by-mail systems mitigate the negative association between infants and mothers' turnout.

Keywords: Voter turnout; gender gap; life transitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00020072

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