School spending and extension of the youth voting franchise: Evidence from an experiment in Norway

Ole Henning Nyhus and Bjarne Strøm ()
Additional contact information
Bjarne Strøm: Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Abstract: Changes in population age composition is challenging in modern welfare states. Intergenerational conflicts may have important consequences for provision of services directed towards specific age groups as schooling and care for elderly. A relevant question is to what extent the supply side responds to changes in the age composition of the electorate in terms of actual spending policies. This paper exploits a novel experiment that took place in Norway in the 2011 local elections to estimate the causal relationship between local government school spending and the age composition of the electorate. We exploit that the voting age was reduced from 18 to 16 years in local elections in selected local governments (experimental governments), while voting age was kept at 18 in the rest (control governments). Using a difference in differences strategy, we find that compulsory school spending decreased by approximately 2% in the experimental governments. The results are robust across a number of econometric specifications and robustness checks. Since all the newly enfranchised voters had just finished compulsory school and receive no direct benefits from local government school spending, the result is consistent with selfish voter behavior.

Keywords: Youth voting franchise; Compulsory school spending; Local governments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H10 H70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2019-01-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-exp, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.svt.ntnu.no/ISO/WP/2019/1_19.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nst:samfok:17719

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Larsen ().