Download Effects of first-time voting age on turnout

Effects of first-time voting age on turnout evidence from Norwegian elections
Øystein M. Hernæs∗
April 16, 2013
Abstract
I exploit variation in first-time voting age that arises through voting
eligibility rules and two-year election cycles to estimate the effects of firsttime voting age on turnout in Norwegian local elections. I find that obtaining the right to vote at a lower age is associated with substantially higher
turnout for all first-time voters, but lower subsequent turnout among those
with only high school education. I speculate that the long-term effect is
a consequence of different experiences as first-time voters. The results
indicate that lowering the age requirement may lead to lower long-term
turnout overall and lower political power of low-education groups, and
provide empirical evidence of the trade-offs involved in setting an optimal
voting age.
Keywords: Elections, Voting Behavior
JEL Classification: D72
1
Introduction
What are the effects of first-time voting age on turnout?
∗
European University Institute, Department of Economics, email: [email protected].
(Some of) the data applied in the analysis in this publication are based on ”Election Survey for
the Municipal Elections, 1995” and ”Local Election Survey 1999”. The surveys ware financed
by Institute of Social Research (ISF), Department of Political Science, University of Oslo and
the Ministry of Regional Development and Local Government. The data are provided by
Statistics Norway, and prepared and made available by the Norwegian Social Science Data
Services (NSD). Neither ISF, the Ministry of Regional Development and Local Government,
Statistics Norway, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo nor NSD are responsible
for the analyses/interpretation of the data presented here.
1
In many countries, there is an ongoing debate about what the legal voting age
should be.1 The question is usually whether to lower the requirement from being
18 to 16 years old. In the Norwegian case, the explicitly stated key objective for
lowering the requirement is to increase the political participation of the young,
in both the short and the long run. Another objective is to have a larger share
of the population represented politically. One concern about the proposed policy
change is that the election may be less informative if younger people are less
knowledgeable than the voting population at large. This paper investigates the
effects of having younger people vote, an sheds some light on the mechanisms
behind individual voting behavior.
The methodology is to exploit the variation in voting age that arises through
voting eligibility rules and two-year election cycles, whereby first-time voters
come from two different cohorts. Crudely, the approach is to see whether there
is a difference in turnout between the two types of voters, those that had the
opportunity to vote for the first time the year they turned 18 and those that had
to wait until the year they turned 19. Age trends for the two types are depicted
in the following graph. A version of this graph disaggregated by education can
be found in the appendix as Figure (2).
Figure 1: Average turnout by cohort. “young” were able to vote in the year they
turned 18, “old” in the year they turned 19. Age obtained in the election year
on the horizontal axis.
I find that among first-time voters, the youngest cohort has higher turnout,
however in the long run, individuals who belonged to the youngest cohort as
first-time voters have lower turnout, in particular the subset of individuals with
1
For instance in Austria, Germany, the Nordic countries, UK, Ireland, US (Berkeley, California).
2
only high school education. This suggests the importance of the first voting
experience to understand an individual’s voting decision. Further, lowering the
voting age is no panacea for inducing higher turnout, will lead to changes in the
composition of voters and thereby affect both the distribution of political power
and the informativeness of the election.
2
Literature
Voting behavior has been widely studied, but there are few papers credibly identifying causal effects. The most closely related contributions come from the strand
of literature that investigates voting habits. Franklin (2004) claims that the extension of the franchise by lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years in the US
lead to a first-time voting situation that was less conducive to acquiring a habit
of voting, and that the result was many life-long non-voters. I find evidence that
obtaining the right to vote earlier indeed has a negative impact on turnout later in
life, however this is likely through a different mechanism than the one suggested
by Franklin, as I also find that younger first-time voters have substantially higher
turnout than older ones.
Meredith (2009) “compares participation decisions and partisan affiliations of
individuals who turned 18 just before past elections with those who turned 18 just
after.” Eligibility increases subsequent turnout and to some extent the likelihoods
both of being affiliated with a party and of this party being the Democrats. The
data come from the California Statewide Voter File, which contains information of
all registered voters in the state of California. Relatedly, Dinas (2012) exploits the
fact that in the 1968 US presidential election, the voting eligibility requirement
was to have turned 21 years old on election day. Using survey data, he finds
that those that were just eligible in the 1968 election have a substantially higher
propensity to vote in the 1970 and 1972 elections than those not eligible in 1968.
A problem with both these studies is that those that could vote in the previous
election will differ in political experience, which will likely affect turnout.
Denny and Doyle (2009) take individual persistence in turnout as given, and
investigate whether the persistence is due to individual characteristics or habits.
The data used is from a British child development study, which contains information on respondents’ turnout in three elections as well as many other factors. The
authors use residential mobility between the ages of 16 and 23 as an instrumental
variable that has a (negative) effect on turnout when the individual is in that
age range, but no direct effect on turnout later. They estimate that everything
else equal, an individual who voted in one election is 13 percentage points more
likely to vote in the next election.
Experimental work by Gerber et al. (2003) shows that people randomly urged
to vote were more likely to vote in both the upcoming and the subsequent election.
3
3
Data
After every Norwegian election, Statistics Norway initiates a survey of the electorate by means of a representative sample. E.g., after the 1999 local elections,
a (stratified) sample of 4323 people between the ages of 17 and 80 years was
drawn. The election councils in the municipalities then checked in the electoral
rolls whether these persons voted, after which it was attempted to undertake an
extensive interview, lasting approximately one hour, with everyone in the sample.
This reduced the sample to 3193 individuals.
The survey is undertaken as a rolling panel, where half of the initial gross
sample in one survey are retained from the previous survey. Because of the rolling
panel structure, the data is potentially plagued by an endogeneity problem, as
being interviewed about one election may affect behavior related to the next
election. I deal with this by excluding all second-time participants.
These surveys have been carried out after all parliamentary elections since
1957 and local elections since 1995. Unfortunately, only some of the surveys
contain information on the year of birth of an individual (as opposed to age at
the time of the interview), which is essential for my purposes. The net sample
consists of those that accept to be interviewed. It contains information that
may be used to control for variables that are know to be important for turnout,
most notably education and income. For local elections, information about year
of birth is available for 1995 and 1999. These two surveys serve as my main
source of data. I include only those that are inteviewed for the first time to
avoid any endogeneity issues arising from repeat interviewing, and pool the then
independent observations together.
There is strong non-random selection into participating in the survey - in
1999, the turnout among those that participated was 21.2 % points higher than
among those that declined. Note that this is probably upwards biased, as it has
not been possible to control for repeat interviewing for the gross sample. Thus
those that participated cannot unquestionably be taken to be representative of
the total population, but at least they are representative of those that would
accept to be interviewed, who after all make up a large share of the total sample.
The combined file from the 1995 and 1999 surveys contains 1633 first-time
survey participants aged below 40. The reason for the age cut-off is that before
1978 the voting age was 20 years, thus I use only those born in 1960 or later,
as there may be different effects at play in 18 vs. 19 year-olds than in 20 vs. 21
year-olds. In particular, since the surveys for the local elections did not start until
1995, I can not ascertain whether there was a difference between the first-time
voters when there was a higher voting age.
As can be seen from the table of summary statistics below, the sample is well
balanced across the relevant variables. One feature that may appear anomalous
is that individuals with a university education have a lower turnout. However,
most people who go to university move away from the constituency where they
4
grew up and tend to have a depressed turnout rate in the following local elections,
thus lowering the average.
Table
All
mean sd
voted
0.62 0.49
e18
0.54 0.50
education 1.93 0.69
age
27.15 6.18
female
0.49 0.50
el1999
0.44 0.50
N
1633
4
1: Summary
Primary
mean sd
0.62 0.49
0.55 0.50
1.00 0.00
28.20 6.48
0.52 0.50
0.43 0.50
444
statistics
High school University
mean sd mean sd
0.63 0.48 0.59 0.49
0.56 0.50 0.47 0.50
2.00 0.00 3.00 0.00
26.46 6.04 27.53 5.88
0.46 0.50 0.51 0.50
0.42 0.49 0.51 0.50
854
335
Method
I exploit the variation in voting age that arises through the two-year election
cycles. In most countries the requirement for voting is to be at least 18 years old
on the day of the election. In Norway, however, the requirement is to become 18
years old in the year of the election. Since elections take place in the fall every
second year, a person can be anywhere between 17 years and 8 months (born
December 31) and 19 years and 8 months (born January 1) the first time he or
she has the opportunity to vote.
The advantage of the requirement of turning 18 years old in the year of the
election is that any variation related to time of the year at which an individual
is born can be ignored since both the treated and the control groups consist of
people born throughout the year. Any difference between adjacent cohorts should
be due to the cohorts.
I do not observe anyone more than once, but by knowing their year of birth I
know how old they were in the year when they obtained the opportunity to vote
for the first time. Since elections take place in odd years, it will quite simply be
the case that those born in an odd year got the right to vote for the first time in
the year they turned 18, while those born in an even year got the right the year
they turned 19. I analyze whether the voting behavior of the group that obtained
the opportunity to vote for the first time as 18-year olds differs on average from
that of the group that became eligible as 19-year olds.
I focus on local elections since the discussed voting age requirement change
both in Norway and most other countries is proposed at this level of government.
I am interested in the average effect (β) of obtaining the right to vote early
(e18i ), possibly different for different education groups (δj ), on voting (vi ). The
5
study of the relation between education and turnout has been widely studied
(Verba and Nie, 1972; Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980; Brady et al., 1995), and
a positive correlation between the two is a well established finding. Several recent papers try to identify whether there is a causal effect from education on
turnout or whether there is some third factor that causes both (Dee, 2004; Milligan et al., 2004; Tenn, 2007; Sondheimer and Green, 2010). Since educated and
non-educated individuals are arguably different types of voters, it is reasonable
to allow the effect to vary by education level.
I estimate the following model:
vi = α + βe18i + edui γ + e18i ∗ edui δ + xi ζ + i
(1)
v is equal to 1 if the individual voted, 0 otherwise. e18 is equal to 1 if the
individual was eligible to vote in the year of turning 18 years old, 0 otherwise. edu
is a vector of three dummy variables indicating the individual’s highest education
level - primary school, high school or university. x denotes a set of controls
including education, age and age squared and cubed, whether the individual was
observed in the 1995 or 1999 election and geographical region. is the disturbance
term.
Two adjacent cohorts will differ in the same way in the early eligibility indicator e18 and age. The identifying assumption is that the age effect can be
accounted for by controlling for age additively in the estimation. Period effects
should cancel out through the treatment taking place every other year.
Whether to vote or not is a binary choice. The linear probability model is
reasonable here, as I am interested in the partial effect of early eligibility averaged
over the other covariates, not at particular values, and the covariates are mostly
discrete. Estimation with a logistic model yields similar results, shown in table
(6). I use robust standard errors because of heteroskedasticity arising from the
binary dependent variable.
I use only those who participate in the survey for the first time to eliminate
any endogeneity issues that might arise from repeat interviewing.
5
5.1
Results
First-time voters
Table (2) shows the result of regressing the voting dummy on whether an individual was eligible at 18 years old or not and the available controls, including
only first-time voters. As can be seen in the first column, in average 18-year olds
have a turnout that is 31.7 percentage points higher than that of the 19-year olds.
The subsequent columns show the results for the subsets of voters differentiated
by education level. We can see that the average results, from the first column,
6
Table 2: Turnout among first-time voters.
Higher turnout among those eligible to vote at 18 years old.
All
Primary HighSchool University
b/se
b/se
b/se
b/se
e18
0.317***
0.341
0.330**
-0.375
(0.094)
(0.267)
(0.104)
(0.700)
female
0.033
0.048
0.045
-0.625
(0.066)
(0.125)
(0.082)
(0.700)
education
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
region
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
constant
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
R-sqr
0.098
0.242
0.107
0.235
N
218
63
142
13
* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001
are driven by those with high school education, among whom the younger cohort
has a statistically significant 33 percentage points higher turnout than the older.
The most likely explanation for the difference between the two cohorts of firsttime voters is that younger voters get more exposure to the election and politics
through more often living at home and being in school, and thus vote more often
due to increased intrinsic benefit or higher social pressure. There may also be
practical reasons related to living at home, such as being able to go with one’s
parents to the voting booth. Another explanation is that the 19-year-olds more
often have paid work and thus face a higher opportunity cost of voting.
Although one may argue about the mechanism, the fact remains that there
is an important difference between the two groups of first-time voters. The remainder of the paper investigates whether this difference is present also later in
life.
5.2
Long term average effects
Table (3) below shows the estimates of the average marginal effect of early eligibility. For ease of interpretation, the table shows the results from estimating
the regression equation (1) with the three different education levels (primary
school, high school, university) as baseline. Thus the coefficient on e18 indicates
the effect of early eligibility on that particular group. For readability only this
coefficient is shown; the full table can be found in the appendix as Table (4).
First-time voters are left out, as I am here interested in the average long-term
effects of being a young first-time voter and do not want to mix this up with what
goes on in voters’ first election. In particular, different experiences as first-time
voters may be the source of a possible later difference between adjacent cohorts.
While there are small and not statistically significant effects for those with
7
Table 3: Long term effect of early eligibility on turnout.
OLS. Robust standard errors. First-time voters excluded.
Heading indicates baseline education.
Primary HighSchool University
b/se
b/se
b/se
eligible at 18
0.035
-0.101**
-0.014
(0.049)
(0.035)
(0.050)
primary
0.000
-0.116**
-0.031
(.)
(0.041)
(0.049)
highschool
0.116**
0.000
0.085*
(0.041)
(.)
(0.042)
uni
0.031
-0.085*
0.000
(0.049)
(0.042)
(.)
primary*e18
0.000
0.135*
0.049
(.)
(0.060)
(0.070)
highschool*e18 -0.135*
0.000
-0.086
(0.060)
(.)
(0.061)
uni*e18
-0.049
0.086
0.000
(0.070)
(0.061)
(.)
age effects
Yes
Yes
Yes
region
Yes
Yes
Yes
female
Yes
Yes
Yes
election
Yes
Yes
Yes
constant
Yes
Yes
Yes
R-sqr
0.105
0.105
0.105
N
1415
1415
1415
* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001
primary school or university (columns 1 and 3), there is a large and statistically
significant negative effect for people with high school (column 2). Since this
is estimated using a linear probability model, we can interpret the coefficients
directly as effects on the voting probability. For those with high school, the
average effect of getting the opportunity to vote early is a reduction in turnout
of 10 % points. This result is contrary to the widely held belief that increasing
youth turnout will increase turnout in the long term. To be sure, in the absence
of panel data, one cannot know whether the individuals that vote less in the long
term voted or not in their first election, but belonging to the high-turnout cohort
did have a negative effect on their subsequent turnout.
One possible mechanism behind these results is that some in the middle education group become satiated or disillusioned with (local) politics after getting
a high degree of exposure to it as first-time voters. Thus they acquire a habit of
non-voting as hypothesized by Franklin (2004), albeit through a different mech8
anism.
It is important to keep in mind that as each voter is only observed once, I do
not know whether an individual voted in her first election, only whether she was
part of what is usually a high-voting environment, i.e. the “young” voters. The
lack of any long-term positive effect in any case suggests that the high turnout
seen among the youngest voters is not due to intrinsic motivation on part of the
young voters.
Predicted turnout is never below 0, and in only one case does it exceed 1, in
which case it is 1.02.
5.3
Implications: Turnout, Representation, Information
Although a lower voting age leads to higher turnout among first-time voters, it
decreases turnout for people with only high school education. Thus lowering the
voting age should not be regarded as a panacea for increasing long term turnout,
even though it may lead to high youth turnout. On the contrary, if many are
discouraged from voting, turnout may decrease.
If these results hold for younger voters, another implication is that those
with little education would be represented to a smaller degree, a change in the
composition of voters which may have consequences for redistribution and policy
generally. Since the share of the population with only primary education is small,
the effect would primarily be an increase in the power of high-education groups.
Lastly, the informativeness of the election may decrease or increase. The
votes of the highly educated would count relatively more and there would be
two additional cohorts of voters contributing. On the other hand, younger and
possibly less knowledgeable people would be voting.
A few caveats: I am only looking at partial effects and local elections, dynamics may not be identical for younger voters, and it may be the case that a high
turnout twice when young have long term effects.
6
6.1
Robustness checks
Restricting to older voters
Leaving out the first-time voters when estimating the long-term effects ensures
that those that went to high school for the most part have completed that education. However the group of people in their early twenties will consist of a mix
of those that start working at that point and those that go to university. To
allow for more selection by types into education, I also estimate the model with
only people aged above 25. This restriction also ensure that “age effects” such as
being in high school, doing military service or just having moved out disappear.
9
The results, shown in (5), are fairly similar. The negative effect of early eligibility
is now almost 12 % points for those with only high school.
6.2
Logistic regression
Estimating the model with a logit specification also yields similar results. These
are shown in table (6).
7
Conclusions
Being eligible to vote at a lower age is associated with higher turnout in one’s first
election and lower turnout later for individuals with only high school education.
Voting requirement rules by year of birth and two-year election cycles made it
possible to estimate these effects. Further research is needed to pin down the
mechanism behind the results, which suggest that the relationship between firsttime voting experiences and subsequent turnout is more complicated than has
previously been assumed. The results have implications for turnout, political
representation and the informativeness of elections that are important to take
into account when considering the optimal voting age requirement.
References
Brady, H. E., Verba, S., and Schlozman, K. L. (1995). Beyond ses: A resource model of political participation. The American Political Science Review,
89(2):271–294.
Dee, T. S. (2004). Are there civic returns to education?
Economics, 88(9):1697–1720.
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Denny, K. and Doyle, O. (2009). Does voting history matter? analysing persistence in turnout. American Journal of Political Science, 53(1):17–35.
Dinas, E. (2012). The formation of voting habits. Journal of Elections, Public
Opinion & Parties, 22(4):431–456.
Franklin, M. (2004). Voter turnout and the dynamics of electoral competition in
established democracies since 1945. Cambridge University Press.
Gerber, A., Green, D., and Shachar, R. (2003). Voting may be habit-forming:
evidence from a randomized field experiment. American Journal of Political
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Meredith, M. (2009). Persistence in political participation. Quarterly Journal of
Political Science, 4(3):186–208.
10
Milligan, K., Moretti, E., and Oreopoulos, P. (2004). Does education improve
citizenship? evidence from the united states and the united kingdom. Journal
of Public Economics, 88(9):1667–1695.
Sondheimer, R. M. and Green, D. P. (2010). Using experiments to estimate the
effects of education on voter turnout. American Journal of Political Science,
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Verba, S. and Nie, N. H. (1972). Participation in America: Social equality and
political democracy. New York: Harper& Row.
Wolfinger, R. E. and Rosenstone, S. J. (1980). Who votes? Yale University Press.
11
Appendix
List of Tables
1
2
3
4
5
6
Summary statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Turnout among first-time voters. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Long term effect of early eligibility on turnout. OLS. .
Effect on voting probability. OLS. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Effect on voting probability for people aged > 25. OLS.
Effect on voting probability. Logit. . . . . . . . . . . .
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Table 4:
Effect on voting probability.
OLS.
Title of column indicates
which education level is specified as baseline. Three different
specifications of the baseline
education level for ease of
interpretation of coefficients
and standard errors on early
eligibility e18.
Table 5:
Effect on voting probability for
people aged > 25. OLS.
Title of column indicates
which education level is specified as baseline. Three different
specifications of the baseline
education level for ease of
interpretation of coefficients
and standard errors on early
eligibility e18.
14
Table 6:
Effect on voting probability.
Logit.
Title of column indicates
which education level is
specified as baseline. Three
different specifications of
the baseline education level
for ease of interpretation
of coefficients and standard
errors on early eligibility e18.
15
Figure 2: Average turnout by cohort and education. “young” were able to vote
in the year they turned 18, “old” in the year they turned 19. Age obtained in
the election year on the horizontal axis.
16