Replay - The Effect of Children's Economic Hardship on Future Voting

"Material Deprivation in Childhood and Unequal Political Socialization: The Effect of Children's Economic Hardship on Future Voting"

CEE General Seminar, 6 December 2022.

Long-term socialisation patterns are considered a key explanation for socio-economic inequalities in political participation. Material conditions in youth and childhood are assumed to contribute to rather stable trajectories of political apathy or involvement and lay the foundations for political inequality from before voting age and far into adulthood. However, our understanding of when such inequalities begin to become noticeable, the importance of parental as opposed to personal socio-economic status, and potential long-term consequences is still limited. Paul Marx and his co-author Sebastian Jungkunz address these issues using the youth questionnaire of the UK Household Longitudinal Study. They show that material deprivation in childhood still has a substantial negative effect on turnout when young adults reach the first election in which they are eligible to vote. This result holds when they control for an unusually exhaustive list of potential confounders, such as psychological childhood characteristics, parental political interest and education, present material conditions, mental health, and future educational degrees. They, hence, demonstrate that—while personal socio-economic experiences in early adulthood are not irrelevant — socio-economic family background has an independent, strong, and (probably) lasting effect on political participation.

Paul Marx is a Professor of Political Science and Socio-Economics at University of Duisburg-Essen. In addition, he is affiliated to the Danish Centre for Welfare Studies as a part-time professor and to the IZA Institute of Labor Economics as a research fellow. In the current academic year, he is visiting professor at Sciences Po (Alfred Grosser Chair) and he conducts research at the CEE on unequal political participation and representation. Further research interests include comparative labour market analysis and the politics of taxation. His work has been published in journals such as British Journal of Sociology, European Journal of Political Research, European Sociological Review, and the Journal of Politics.

6 December 2022 session of the CEE general seminar, chaired by Isabelle Guinaudeau, CNRS Research Fellow at the CEE. Presentation discussed by Théodore Tallent, PhD candidate at the CEE, and Nonna Mayer, CNRS Research Professor (emeritus) at the CEE.