Moved to Vote: The Long-Run Effects of Neighborhoods on Political Participation

Eric Chyn and Kareem Haggag

No 2019-079, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: How does one's childhood neighborhood shape political engagement later in life? We leverage a natural experiment that moved children out of disadvantaged neighborhoods to study effects on their voting behavior more than a decade later. Using linked administrative data, we find that children who were displaced by public housing demolitions and moved using housing vouchers are 12 percent (3.3 percentage points) more likely to vote in adulthood, relative to their nondisplaced peers. We argue that this result is unlikely to be driven by changes in incarceration or in their parents' outcomes, but rather by improvements in education and labor market outcomes, and perhaps by socialization. These results suggest that, in addition to reducing economic inequality, housing assistance programs that improve one's childhood neighborhood may be a useful tool in reducing inequality in political participation.

Keywords: political engagement; disadvantaged neighborhood; public housing demolitions; incarceration; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H75 I38 J13 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-lab, nep-pol and nep-ure
Note: MIP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Chyn_Haggag_2019_moved-to-vote.pdf First version, November 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Moved to Vote: The Long-Run Effects of Neighborhoods on Political Participation (2023)
Working Paper: Moved to Vote: The Long-Run Effects of Neighborhoods on Political Participation (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2019-079

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