Female Socialization: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers' Voting on Women's Issues
American Economic Review · 2008 · Volume 98 · Issue 1
Abstract
Parenting daughters, sociologists have shown, increases feminist sympathies. I test the hypothesis that children, much like neighbors or peers, can influence parental behavior. I demonstrate that conditional on total number of children, each daughter increases a congressperson's propensity to vote liberally, particularly on reproductive rights issues. The results identify an important (and previously omitted) explanatory variable in the literature on congressional decision making. Additionally the paper highlights the relevance of child-to-parent behavioral influence. (JEL D72, D83, J16)
Keywords
Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior, Search, Learning, Information and Knowledge, Communication, Belief, Economics of Gender, Non-labor Discrimination
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