Abstract
This paper seeks to understand the role played by immigrant ethnic composition in the process of women’s suffrage in the United States. Any theory of the extension of voting rights to women must explain why native men voted to extend the franchise to women. In this paper, we consider what we call the “ethnic group threat.” To the extent that native males believed that the political preferences of native women were better aligned with theirs than new (primarily male) immigrants, male voters would be willing to grant women voting rights to secure their social and political status. We use a hazard model and immigration data from 1870 to 1920 to investigate the impact of immigrant ethnic composition on women suffrage, we find that states with a higher proportion of immigrants from Italy, Eastern/Southern Europe, and Mexico gave women the the right to vote faster.
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Notes
- 1.
For a purely theoretical approach consistent with this argument, see Conley and Temimi (2001).
- 2.
There is, however, a large literature on the effects of women’s suffrage, especially with respect to the amount and composition of government spending. In their well-cited paper, Lott and Kenny (1999) find that women’s suffrage was associated with increases in state government expenditures and revenues. In the same vein, Aidt and Dallal (2008) look at a sample of six European countries from 1869–1960 and find that social sending increased in both the short and long run after women had the right to vote. Abrams and Settle (1999) look at the expansion of the voting franchise to women in Switzerland in 1971 and find social welfare spending increased by 28% after extension. Krogstrup and Wälti (2011) take advantage of the fact that women’s suffrage occurred in different Swiss cantons at different times and find that women’s suffrage led to reduced budget deficits. Miller (2008) finds that changes in women’s suffrage laws led to big changes in legislative behavior, especially spending on local public health.
- 3.
Goldin (1994) notes that those of German and British ancestry opposed immigration during this period.
- 4.
For more on the Emergency Quota Act and the political economy of immigration restrictions from 1890 to 1921, see Goldin (1994).
- 5.
While Abramitzky et al. (2016) do not have data for Mexican immigrants or Eastern/Southern Europeans, they find that Italians were the least likely to marry outside their ethnic group in the first-generation. Only 11% of first-generation Italians married a non-Italian contrasted with 72% of Scots (the highest rate of out-group marriage).
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Wong, HP.C., Clark, J.R., Hall, J.C. (2018). Immigrant Ethnic Composition and the Adoption of Women’s Suffrage in the United States. In: Hall, J., Witcher, M. (eds) Public Choice Analyses of American Economic History. Studies in Public Choice, vol 37. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95819-4_8
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