Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/10/2024
11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Jacob Bastian, Assistant Professor of Economics at Rutgers University, will present to our economics graduate students and faculty on Friday, October 4th, 11:00am-12:30pm (EST) in KTH 334.

Jacob will present the paper “Does Working Cause Women To Vote Less and Become More Politically Conservative?”.

Abstract

While the correlation between employment and voting is positive, this paper is the first to show that the causal relationship is negative. Instrumenting for working using EITC expansions and welfare reform, I find that working women are less likely to vote and become more politically conservative. Consistent with these effects, I find decreases in being registered to vote, civic participation, and political knowledge, and increased preferences for conservative government policies. Effects are driven by younger, White, lower-educated mothers, that did not have a working mother growing up, and are consistent across six data sources that span five decades. Overall, working leads to more votes for Republicans and less votes for Democrats. While recent decades have seen more and more women voting Democrat, even more women would have voted Democrat if not for decades of pro-work public policy targeting lower-income mothers.

View Jacob’s professional website.