Do Tuition Subsidies Raise Political Participation?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Firoozi, Daniel; Geyn, Igor
• 署名单位: Claremont Colleges; Claremont McKenna College; Claremont Graduate University; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20240422
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: education; manipulation; mortality; BIAS

摘要

Civic externalities motivate education expenditures, but estimates of the civic returns to large-scale education subsidies are scarce. We use 16 million financial aid applications and a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate how a tuition-free college program impacts political participation. We find that each of the 2.6 million awards increased a student's voter turnout rate by 4-12 percentage points in 2020, raising total turnout and Biden's margin of victory in the awarding state. We find evidence consistent with peer socialization, among other mechanisms, and show that the civic externalities of education spending can be large enough to sway elections. (JEL D72, D91, I22, I23)