Parents, Infants, and Voter Turnout

Angela Cools

No 20-04, Working Papers from Davidson College, Department of Economics

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 2.3 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 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)
JEL-codes: D10 D72 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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