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Estimating the Impact of Education on Political Participation: Evidence from Monozygotic Twins in the United States, Denmark and Sweden

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Abstract

In this study we provide new evidence on the much-discussed effect of education on political participation by utilizing the quasi-experiment of twinning. By looking at the relationship between education and participation within monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs we are able to circumvent traditional sources of confounding of the relationship rooted in genes and early life family environment because MZ twins share both. The results of within-twin pair analyses based on surveys from the United States, Denmark and Sweden show that while the relationship between education and political participation is highly confounded by genes and/or familial environment in all three countries, a positive impact remains of years of education in the US and of high school completion in Denmark. No effect is found in Sweden. Robustness checks suggest that the observed effect is not confounded by within-twin pair differences in prenatal environment nor differential treatment during childhood, and, if anything, that it most likely constitutes a lower bound estimate.

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Notes

  1. Heritability estimates vary for different (sub-)populations and across studies, but estimates around 50 %, and often higher, is common (e.g. Bouchard and McGue 2003; Plomin et al. 2008, ch. 8).

  2. The co-twin control approach has been widely used within health research, e.g. as a way of assessing the effect of early-life risk behavior (Lynskey et al. 2003; Grant et al. 2006) or stressful life events (Kendler & Gardner 2001; Osler et al. 2008) on health outcomes. Similarly, and more relevant for the present analysis, economists and public health scholars have related within-twin pair differences in educational attainment to differences in income (Ashenfelter and Rouse 1998; Isacsson 1999) and health (Lundborg 2008; Madsen et al. 2010).

  3. Using 27 and 29 as alternative cut-offs did not alter the substantive conclusion of the analysis.

  4. Alpha of the scales vary from 0.576 to 0.729 in the three countries. In one case, the comparable scale in Denmark, alpha was substantially lower (0.323), but to further comparison between the countries, we decided to use the scale nonetheless.

  5. We are unable to distinguish between attendance and completion of college/high school in the Danish and the Swedish data and thus we do not pursue this distinction further (cf. Kam and Palmer 2011; Henderson and Chatfield 2011).

  6. Also, note that the limited variation in education within-twin pairs leads to higher standard errors on our estimates, which in turn means that the significance test is conservative.

  7. Differences in cognitive ability, personality or interests that stem from differences in education are obviously not confounders in this regard, but rather mechanisms underlying the observed relationship.

  8. Note that while it may seem desirable to include measures of cognitive ability and personality directly in our models to gauge within-twin pair differences in these traits (the only available measure in our data is IQ for men [from conscription] in Sweden), both may also be a result, and not only a cause, of education (Falch and Massih 2011; Heckman et al. 2009), with post-treatment bias as a consequence. Therefore, we prefer including birth weight and birth order, as both variables are arguably exogenous to cognitive ability and personality, as well as education.

  9. We only include twin pairs who knew and agreed on birth weight/sequence in the analysis.

  10. Interestingly, as opposed to in Denmark, where birth weight was significantly correlated with participation, but not with education, the opposite patterns occurs in Sweden. For our purposes, however, the important point is that birth weight does not confound the relationship between education and participation.

  11. Differential treatment by parents or attending different classes in school may, of course, be the result of existing differences between the twins and as such not necessarily the (sole) causal driver of subsequent differences in education and participation. For our purposes, the key point is assessing whether these differences confound the relationship between education and participation.

  12. The twins tend to share childhood experiences with means of 2.614 (US) and 2.626 (Denmark) on the scale tapping equal childhood environment running from 0 (completely shared) to 10 (completely different), and to be internally consistent in their evaluation of the childhood experiences (average difference on the scale was 0.819 in Denmark and 0.964 in the US) (analyses based on sample used in Table 2 for the full participation measure).

  13. See Aschenfelter and Rouse (1998, pp. 271–73) for an application of a similar logic.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the VELUX foundation as well as the Faculty of Social Science, University of Southern Denmark (for an FIK grant) for financial support. Moreover, we would like to thank Cindy Kam, as well as participants at the workshop on Political Psychology at the University of Southern Denmark in 2013, and participants at the Political Behavior workshop at University of Copenhagen in 2013, for helpful feedback. Finally, we would like to thank Kim Mannemar Sønderskov and Bolette Danckert for advice on the statistical analyses. Any remaining errors are, of course, our own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353, Copenhagen K, Denmark

    Peter Thisted Dinesen

  2. Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Christopher T. Dawes

  3. Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden

    Magnus Johannesson

  4. Department of Political Science, University of Southern Denmark, 5230, Odense M, Denmark

    Robert Klemmensen & Asbjørn Sonne Nørgaard

  5. Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

    Patrik Magnusson

  6. The Danish Twin Registry, Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, 5230, Odense M, Denmark

    Inge Petersen

  7. Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Sven Oskarsson

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  1. Peter Thisted Dinesen
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Dinesen, P.T., Dawes, C.T., Johannesson, M. et al. Estimating the Impact of Education on Political Participation: Evidence from Monozygotic Twins in the United States, Denmark and Sweden. Polit Behav 38, 579–601 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-015-9328-2

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