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Title: The Anti-Democrat Diploma: How High School Education Increases Support for the Republican Party

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2016

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Abstract: Attending high school can alter student life trajectories by affecting labor market prospects and exposure to ideas and networks. However, schoolings influence competes with powerful early socialization forces, and may be confounded by well-established selection biases. Consequently, little is known about whether or how high school education shapes downstream political preferences and voting behavior. Using a difference-in-differences design exploiting variation in U.S. state dropout laws across cohorts, I find that raising the school dropout age substantially increases Republican partisan identification and voting later in life. Instrumental variables estimates, which reflect dropout laws principally impacting minorities, show that each completed grade of high school increases Republican support by around 10 percentage points. High schools effects operate by increasing income, which increases support for conservative economic policies and ultimately the Republican party. These effects influence future state legislature composition, suggesting that recent Democrat attempts to raise state dropout ages are strategically misguided.

Url: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jmarshall/files/the_anti-democrat_diploma.pdf

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Authors: Marshall, John

Publisher: Columbia University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Other

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