The Effect of Education on Voter Turnout and Its Mechanism

A ThesisPresented to
The Faculty of International Social Sciences
Gakushuin University

byKakeru Eda
2024/01/25

1© 2024
Kakeru Eda
All rights reserved

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

The Effect of Education on Voter Turnout and Its Mechanism
Abstract
This thesis aims to analyze the effect of education on voting behavior and its
mechanism in the United States. In the United States, people who are willing to vote mustregister to vote with their local governments before the election. The voting rate amongpeople who completed the procedure is higher than in other G7 countries, but the voting
rate among holders of voting rights is much lower than in other countries. To gain insightto address the problem, this study estimates the effect of education on voting using thedata of ANES in 2020. To deal with the endogeneity of education, my study estimates theeffect of education on intermediate variables and voter turnout with Instrumental Variable(IV) Methods. The main literature of my study (Jackson, 1995) estimated them with
Probit regression, not dealing with the endogeneity of education. In my study, the yearsof schooling of respondent’s spouse is used as an IV. Our results show that years ofschooling are effective to accelerate the people’s voting behavior. In addition, years ofschooling have positive effects on intermediate variables: civic duty, internal political
efficacy, and registration status. Also, some intermediate variables, civic duty, internal
political efficacy, and registration status are substantially positively correlated with voting.
Furthermore, there are some differences in estimation results between races. The effectof education on voting is not statistically significant among Black / African American,
Asian American, Native American, and Latinx / Hispanic while White people andislanders have the statistically significant positive effect.

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

要旨
本研究の目的は、アメリカにおける教育が投票行動に及ぼす影響とそのメカニズムを分析することである。本研究では 1995 年の Jackson の先行研究をベースとし、2020 年の ANESのデータを用いて教育と投票行動の関係性を明らかにしようと試みている研究である。本
研究では、配偶者の教育年数を操作変数とした操作変数法を用いて、教育と投票行動の関係
性とその間に存在する中間変数の分析を行った。これにより、プロビット分析を使用した
Jackson の先行研究では行われていない、教育の内生性に対処した分析に成功した。さらに、人種ごとの分析結果を比較することで、Jackson の先行研究にはない人種という観点からの教育効果の検証も同時に達成している。今回の分析結果より、アメリカにおいては教育年数が投票行動を促進させることが明らかになった。また、市民としての義務、政治的効力、政治への意識、投票者登録の有無に定義される中間変数も教育から正の影響を受け、投票行動に正の影響を与えることが判明した。さらに白人間において有意であった教育と投票行動の関係が、黒人間では有意に観測できないなど、教育が投票行動にもたらす効果が人種によって異なることも分析結果より新たに判明した。

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

Table of Contents
Abstract ..............................................................................................................................2
LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................6
LIST OF FIGURES ...........................................................................................................7
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .................................................................................................8
1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................9
1.1 Background Information and Statement of the Problem ................................................... 10
1.2 Significance of the Study .................................................................................................. 11
1.3 Research Question and Hypothesis ................................................................................... 12
1.4 Structure of the Thesis....................................................................................................... 13

2. Literature Review ........................................................................................................13
3. Data..............................................................................................................................17
3.1 About American National Election Studies ...................................................................... 17
3.2 Variables Used as Dependent / Independent Variables ..................................................... 18

4. Conceptual Framework and Model .............................................................................22
5. Context of the Country and Education Sector .............................................................23
6. Estimation Techniques .................................................................................................30
6.1 Index of Political Awareness, Civic Duty, Political Efficacy, and Registration ............... 30
6.2 Ordinary Least Squares ..................................................................................................... 32
6.3 Probit Regression .............................................................................................................. 32
6.4 Instrumental Variable Methods ......................................................................................... 33

7. Descriptive Statistics ...................................................................................................34
8. Findings .......................................................................................................................37
9. Discussion....................................................................................................................45
10. Conclusion .................................................................................................................49

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

References .......................................................................................................................51
Appendix .........................................................................................................................54

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

LIST OF TABLES
1. Explanation of Variables Based on ANES Data Used in This Study ........................20
2. Basic Information of the United States......................................................................26
3. Descriptive Statics .....................................................................................................35
4. The Effect of Education on Voting Estimated by OLS, Probit, and IV .....................39
5. Comparison with Results from Jackson (1995) and My Study Using IV .................42
6. The Effect of Education on Voting Separated by Races Estimated by IV .................43
7. The Effect of Years of Schooling on Five Intermediate Variables Estimated by IV .44
A1. The Effect of Education on Intermediate Variables with Control Variables whichused in my IV regression .................................................................................................54
A2. The Effect of Education on Voting Turnout by Gender Estimated by IV Regression.........................................................................................................................................55

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

LIST OF FIGURES
1. Conceptual Framework of this Analysis ....................................................................23
2. Primary School Enrollment Rate, 1973-2020............................................................27
3. Secondary School Enrollment Rate, 1973-2020 .......................................................27
4. Tertiary School Enrollment Rate, 1973-2020 ............................................................28
5. Tertiary School Enrollment Rate, Male and Female, 1973-2020 ..............................28
6. Educational Expenditure (% of GNI), 1973-2020 .....................................................29
7. Voting Rate among G7 Countries ................................................................................. 30
8. The Ratio of Respondent’s Race ...............................................................................48
9. The Ratio of People Who Had a Voting Registration ................................................48

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISMACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful to Professor Izumi Yamasaki, my advisor, for her unwavering
dedication and guidance during the entirety of my graduation thesis. It has been aprivilege to receive her guidance and insights from her extensive knowledge. Without
her assistance, this study would not have reached completion. I also extend appreciation
to my graduation thesis seminar, Ms. Kosumo Takahashi, Ms. Miyu Osawa, and Ms.
Moe Asano, for their kindness and valuable input.

I would like to appreciate Professor Mai Seki and Professor Ayako Matsuda, for theirinsightful pieces of advice on my thesis at the joint graduation thesis workshop. Theircomments helped me a lot to improve my study.

Lastly, I wish to express my gratitude to my parents, sister, brother, relatives, andfriends for their consistent support and encouragement.

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

1. Introduction
From the early study of Merriam and Gosnell (1924) to recent studies, so muchresearches have pointed out the year of schooling climbs with turnout rates. Researchers
have been trying to find out whether education is the strongest demographic variable withthe result of turnout or not. Wolfinger and Rosenstone (1980) studied the relationshipbetween socioeconomic status (SES 1 ) and voting behavior by separating SES into
education and income. They found that education has stronger effect to these behaviors
than income. Wolfinger and Rosenstone (1980) also mentioned education cultivatespeople’s two abilities, the capacity of understanding complex subjects and civic
responsibility, thus they raise the probability of voting by learning about politics easierand reduce the difficulty of voting.
In addition, for example, some researchers have studied the contribution of
education:
A stable and democratic society is impossible without a minimum degree of literacy
and knowledge on the part of most citizens and without widespread acceptance ofsome common set of values. Education can contribute to both. In consequence, thegain from education of a child accrues not only to the child or to his parents but also
to other members of the society. (Friedman, 1962, p. 75)

The types of research clarifying the relationship between education and turnout
varies from analyzing voter’s basic characteristics such as education level, sex,
occupation, and age (Powell, 1986), to voter’s responsibility and detailed belief for social

1

SES (Socioeconomic status) is the total measure of individual working experience,

economic access, and social position in relation to others.

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

issue in their country. The purpose this thesis is to analyze (1) the effect of education on
voting behavior, (2) hidden factors existing between educational background and voting
participation based on the previous research by Jackson, R. A. (Jackson, 1995), using dataof ANES (American National Election Studies 2 ) in 2020. Jackson (1995) used fiveintermediate variables which have a positive effect for voting in his paper. My study uses
the same intermediate variables and estimate their effects with the data of 2020.
Estimating the effect of education on turnout and intermediate variables contribute toaccelerate political participation more.

1.1 Background Information and Statement of the Problem
Since the field of political study had started, many researches are conducted fromthe viewpoint of the relationship between education and turnout all over the world. Most
research states that there is a positive correlation between educational background andthe act of participating elections.
In addition to the study of basic relationship between education and turnout,
researchers examined the mechanism of the relationship between education and voter
turnout. Jackson (1995) argued five of the most prominent explanations, education instills
a sense of civic duty, education increases sense of political efficacy, education makes
registration easier, and education enhances political sophistication or awareness.
Gutmann (1999, p. 49) also wrote, “education, in a great measure, forms the moral
character of citizens, and moral character along with laws and institutions forms the basisof democratic government.” To accelerate the understanding for politics and the2

ANES (American National Election Studies) is the organization’s name. They hold large-

scale survey every national election from 1948.

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

participation for election among younger generation, clarifying relationship between
education and turnout is one of the most effective ways.

1.2 Significance of the Study
This paper analyzes the relationship between education and voter turnout. Also,
this paper tries to uncover positive and negative effects of variables on the motivation tovote using the same framework as Jackson (1995). My study makes it clear whether
Jackson’s framework would fit with the time. Also, the estimation technique that my study
uses is instrumental variable methods which expects to deal with the problem ofendogeneity of education. There is little previous research trying to solve the problem of
the endogeneity. For example, Jackson (1995) estimated the effect of education on turnout
by using Probit regression which did not deal with endogeneity. Solving the issue ofendogeneity, my study will hold huge significance of study compared to previous research.
Furthermore, I add several results separated by races. As far as I can find, there is noprevious research to discuss the relationship between education and turnout with race.
Therefore, results of estimation including racial aspects also greatly contributes to theliterature.
In both fields of economics of education and political science, it is suggested that
education is closely related to turnout. The history of these studies is long, one of theoldest studies mainly describing the relationship between education and political scienceis the paper of Merriam & Gosnell (1924). It discusses conceivable factors of non-voting.
In their paper, they introduced reasons for non-voting. One is that some people think theyshould not vote because they generally lack education, so they cannot understand what
politicians are doing. Merriam & Gosnell (1924) conclude that educational background12
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

is one of the factors of people’s non-voting.
In addition, Campbell (1960) says that the higher educated people tend to gather
sources of political information and have an awareness of politics. A lot of studies have
proved the universality of the effect, new types of studies came out, the finding ofintermediate factor between education and turnout. Jackson (1995) tried to clarify theseintermediate factors using five variables, civic duty, political efficacy, registration status,and political awareness. He analyzes relationships between education and these fivefactors, five factors and voting turnout. This paper analyzes the relationship between
education and turnout in the United States following the method used by Jackson (1995)
using the most recent data and controlling for the endogeneity of education. His research
was written about thirty years ago, so reanalyzing with the recent data contributes toreveal reliability of Jackson’s method. Furthermore, our study may develop his estimation
method which suits the current times. The developed method helps policymakers toincrease the turnout rate of national election, considering the aspect of the education andcivic consciousness.

1.3 Research Question and Hypothesis
This study mainly has three research questions. The first one is if there is a causal
relationship between education and voting turnout. The second one is what kind ofintermediate factors are existing between the relationship of education and turnout. The
third one is whether there are any differences of estimation results by race. The
hypotheses for these questions are that the causal relationship between education andturnout exists and intermediate factors of social emotions, such as civic duty, political
efficacy, and political awareness strongly affects voting behavior. Furthermore, education

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

has another power to grow these social emotions. In other words, people who received
higher education have stronger feelings as citizens and actively participate in politics.
Also, Black / African American people will receive the effect of education on turnout
compared to other races.

1.4 Structure of the Thesis
This proposal consists of 10 chapters. The first chapter argues the backgroundinformation and statement of the issue, the significance of the study, and researchquestions and hypotheses. The second chapter reviews previous literature of estimating
the relationship between education and turnout by its estimation methods. The thirdchapter describes the data used in the study. The fourth chapter discusses the conceptualmodel of education and turnout. The fifth chapter explains the background andeducational system of the United States. The sixth chapter examines two estimation
techniques using in the study. The seventh chapter shows the descriptive statistics. The
eighth chapter sorts out findings of statistical analyzes. The ninth chapter discusses what
I found from the result. The tenth chapter concludes this whole study and has a suggestion
for policy and future studies.

2. Literature Review
This chapter introduces some literature on the content of the calculus of voting
and components of explanation for people’s turnout from the differential viewpoint of
behavioral science and public choice theory, two main schools in the field of politicalscience.
Riker and Ordeshook (1968) estimated the theory of the calculus of voting. In

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

the paper, the behavior of turnout was explained as a mathematical expression that wasthought difficult to analyze. The theory dealt with fundamental explanations in the public
choice group. It estimates people’s voting action if the result of the formula becomes
greater than zero. In other words, if the result becomes less than zero, it is not reasonable
for electorates to vote for someone. It is constituted by the voter’s differential benefit, theprobability of the voter’s benefit by turnout, the long-term benefit of voting, and the costof voting behavior.
In the field of behavioral science, turnout is explained by the intensity of fivepolitical engagements (Campbell, 1960). It consists of an interest in the campaign,
concern over the election outcome, a sense of political efficacy, a sense of civic duty, anddivergent cases. The report estimates people’s political behavior by fifth factors. From thetheory of Campbell, Jackson (1995) developed the study by estimating the relationshipbetween education and turnout. According to Jackson, previous research about therelationship between education and turnout mainly mentioned that education has a goodeffect on turnout. However, he also indicates there are few researches which unveil thedetailed mechanism of the reason why highly educated people tend to participate in voting
compared to others. From this viewpoint, Jackson approached to be clear the relationshipby using five variables possible to affect education and turnout. Variables, politicalawareness, civic duty, political efficacy, and registration status are estimated using thenational survey data.
In 2000s, some researchers have started estimating unobservable characteristics
of citizens that have a possibility of affecting the result. They considered theseunobservable characteristics exist in the relationship between education and citizenshipand tried to find them by using several estimation methods. Pelkonen (2010) estimated15
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

the impact of education on voter turnout by using the compulsory education reform
carried out in Norway during 1959 to 1972. The compulsory education in Norway wasincreased from seven to nine years by the reform. It legislated in 1959, but local
governments were given the liberty to launch for procuring requirements such as newteachers and facilities. Pelkonen focused on the time lag transferring educational systemand estimated the effect of education on voter turnout by using instrumental variable
method. In the study, there are few positive relationships between education and turnout
in Norway. It contributes to represent those institutional changes that are possible to use
as a source of identification for the impact of education on voting behavior. According to
the study of Kam and Palmer (2008), the new viewpoint of educational effect for politicalbehavior was advocated by the method of propensity-score matching. They focused on
the established theory that higher education has a positive impact for student’s politicalparticipation and verify it. To estimate, they used propensity-score matching. In the firstplace, the propensity score is “an estimate of each observation’s likelihood of having
received the treatment” (Kam and Palmer, 2008). They separate people who graduate highschools into two groups, treatment and control. They analyze treatment group (people
attending college) by a logistic regression. According to the study, they concluded there
are few effects of attending higher education on political participation. They mentionedthat receiving higher education is just a proxy of preadult experiences and influences andit does not mean to accelerate political participation.
The one of the literatures which uses instrumental variable (IV) method is
Angrist and Krueger (1991). They improved the efficiency of the estimates between
education and wage by the concept of quarter of birth. They focused on the difference
between children who are born early in the calendar and later in the calendar is almost

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

one year and hypothesized it has an impact on educational outputs. They separated one
year into four quarters, I (January-March), II (April-June), III (July-September), and IV(October-December) and estimated seasonal effect on education. They used the following
2SLS model:
Ei = Xiπ+ ΣcYtcεc + ΣcΣjYtcQtjθtj + εc [1]
In Wi = Xiβ + ΣcYtcεc + pEi + ε [2]where Ei is the education of the individual have received, X, is a vector ofcovariates, QJ is a dummy variable indicating whether the individual was born in quarterj (j = 1,2,3), and Yc is a dummy variable indicating whether the individual was born inyear c (c = 1 to 10), and Wi is the weekly wage. The coefficient p is the return to education.
From the result of estimation [2] and [3], he concluded that students who attend school
longer because of compulsory schooling laws earn higher wages in their future life. Also,
the quarter of birth has a small effect on the student’s level of educational outcome. In
addition, when estimating relationship between education and wage, the quarter of birth
has a remarkable similarity as an instrument for education. In addition, Dee (2004)
estimates the relationship between education and turnout with the instrumental variableof distance from respondent’s house to the nearest college. The paper concluded the yearof schooling affects the quality of consciousness for citizenship which is defined as afrequency of buying a newspaper. The paper also concluded the quality of education
positively affects the turnout rate and support for freedom of speech.
Although there is some literature which uses IV represented by Angrist &Krueger (1991) and Dee (2004), there is little literature using spouse’s highest education
as an instrumental variable for the estimation of the relationship between education andturnout. Also, there are few literatures to estimate the effect of intermediate variables with

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

IV. Therefore, my study contributes to update findings by estimating with IV.
This study uses instrumental variable method to control the endogeneity ofeducation. Instrumental variable of this study is the highest education of respondent’s
spouse received. Trostel, Walker, and Woolley (2002) stated that spouse’s education is avalid instrument for an instrumental variable. This variable is based on the idea that theyears of education for both husbands and wives is likely to be positively linked. People
with similar educational backgrounds are more inclined to form relationships. Then, they
are likely to have shared experiences or common interests This hypothesis is calledassortative mating. Therefore, the highest education of respondent’s spouse has a close
relationship to the respondent’s highest education and is suitable as instrumental variable.

3. Data
3.1 About American National Election Studies
The data this study uses was retrieved from the survey of American National
Election Studies (ANES). ANES creates nationally representative data every national
election held in the United States since 1942. It includes the contents of voting, public
opinion, and political participation (ANES, n.d.). In The time series survey held in 2020,
5,441 answers of the survey secured before election and 4,779 answers after the election.
In the same survey held in 2016, 4,270 answers were secured as pre-election and 3,648
answers were secured as post-election. These surveys are carried by methods of CASI

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM(Computer-Assisted Self Interview3) and CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interview4)
and samples are collected from all U.S. eligible voters as cross-sectional data. The survey
held in 2020, about 520 pages of the questionnaire consist of mainly two types. Somequestion items are basic information of interviewees such as age, sex, race, marital status,
income, residence, working status, religion, and educational background. Others areinterviewee’s personal beliefs and opinions for current political issues facing UnitedStates. These questions are revised every year following trends and public opinions. In
2020, new questions are added related to issues of sexual minorities and gun control basedon the growing momentum of LGBTQ and mass shooting.
The reason why the study chose to use ANES data is because it has quite varietyof questions asking about not only respondent’s basic information but also their personal
beliefs and creeds. The survey includes exhaustive questions about respondent’s detailed
current life situation. Researchers can get their personal information like race, sex, income,residence, and working status easily. In addition, various questions asking about
respondent’s consciousness for voting and politics makes easier to produce originalindexes or scales which quantify these psychological aspects. The study includes these
psychological aspects in the estimation.

3.2 Variables Used as Dependent / Independent Variables

3

CASI (Computer-Assisted Self Interview) is the mode of interview. Interviewees answer

the survey using own computer. It expected to limit interviewer’s response bias whengathering sensitive information.
4

CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interview) is the mode of interview. Investigators

gather and record answers using computer by face-to-face interview. It expected to control
skipping and check integrity.

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISMThis section describes variables in the ANES dataset which are used in the study5.
Table 1 shows all variables of the study retrieved from ANES 2020 dataset. According tothat, dependent variable is the respondent’s voting status for the latest election.
Independent variables consist of respondent’s detailed information, educational
background, race, residence, and other information. One of the most important
independent variables of the study is educational background. For example, there are twoquestions asking about respondent’s highest education (education) (spouse_education). I
made an original index of years of schooling based on the survey. Questions are “What is
the highest level of school you have completed or the highest degree you have received?”
and “What is the highest level of school your spouse has completed or the highest degree
you have received?” (ANES, n.d.). The choices are divided into 17. Answers 1 to 8 arefor people who graduate secondary school. If they drop out of secondary school, they canchoose the choice of schooling year they have taken at that time. Answers 9 is for people
who graduate high school or pass equivalent test such as GED6. It can recode the year of
schooling as 12 years. Answers 10 to 12 are for people who went to college. If they dropout, they can choose answer 10. Also, answers 11 and 12 are separated by college
programs, occupational/vocational or academic program. Respondents who choose 11 or
12 are assigned 14 years of schooling. Answers 13 to 16 are related to university or
graduate school and differ from received degree. 13 is bachelor’s degree and recode theyear of schooling as 16 years. Also, 14 is master’s degree such as MBA and recode theyear of schooling as 18 years. Similar to 13 and 14, answer 16 is doctor’s degree such as

5

How the variables here are used in the study will be explained in Chapter 6.

6

GED (General Educational Development) is the name of official test. It signifies to havethe same knowledge as traditional high school graduate.

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

PhD and EdD and recode the year of schooling as 21 years. Answer 15, professional
school degree is a little bit different from others. Professional school degree is represented
as MD (Medical Degree). In the United States, students who wish to become a doctor
have to medical school for 4 years after graduating university. Thus, respondent’s year of
schooling who choose answer 15 will count 20 years.
Race variables are for White people (white), Black / African American (black),
Native American (native), Asian American (asian), Native Hawaiian or another PacificIslander (islander), and Latinx / Hispanic (hispanic) (See Table 1 for the details of therace variables). Residence variables describes respondent’s residential status. It contains
the year after voting registration at that place (closing), years of living in community(stability), and whether the residence falls into the category of south part of the UnitedStates (south). I used the definition of southern United States from the United States
Census Bureau (2011). The organization defined 17 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and District ofColumbia) as southern United States. Other variables related to respondent’s personal
information are consisted of respondent’s gender (sex), marital status (marriage), age(age), family income per a year (income), working hour per a week (workhour), thenumber of children which respondents have (children), frequency of attending religions
services (religion), and importance of being to own identity (identity) (see Table 1 for thedetails of control variables).
Table 1
Explanation of Variables Based on ANES Data Used in This StudyName of Variables

The Way to Make the Variables

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

Dependent Variables
vote

Whether the respondent voted or not (voted=1, never voted=0)

Independent Variables(1) Educational backgroundeducation

The highest education respondents have received (less than 1st grade=0,
1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade=2, 5th or 6th grade=6, 7th or 8th grade=8, 9thgrade=9, 10th grade=10, 11th grade=11, 12th grade no diploma=12, highschool diploma or equivalent=12, some college but no degree=13,
associate degree in college: occupational/vocational program=14,
associate degree in college: academic program=14, bachelor’s
degree=16, master’s degree=18, professional school degree=20,
doctorate degree=21)

spouse_education

The highest education respondent’s spouse have received (less than 1 stgrade=0, 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade=2, 5th or 6th grade=6, 7th or 8th grade=8,
9th grade=9, 10th grade=10, 11th grade=11, 12th grade no diploma=12,high school diploma or equivalent=12, some college but no degree=13,
associate degree in college: occupational/vocational program=14,
associate degree in college: academic program=14, bachelor’s
degree=16, master’s degree=18, professional school degree=20,
doctorate degree=21)(2) Race
white

Respondents who recognize themselves as white people (white=1,
African American=0, native=0, Asian=0, islander=0)

black

Respondents who recognize themselves as African American (white=0,
African American=1, native=0, Asian=0, islander=0)

nativeRespondents who recognize themselves as American Indian or Alaska
Native (white=0, Black / African American=0, native=1, Asian=0,
islander=0)

asian

Respondents who recognize themselves as Asian (white=0, African
American=0, native=0, Asian=1, islander=0)

islanderRespondents who recognize themselves as Native Hawaiian or another
Pacific Islander (white=0, African American=0, native=0, Asian=0,
islander=1)(3) Residence
closing

How long has respondents been registered at location

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

stability

Years of living in community

south

Respondent’s registered location(4) Others
sexmarriage

Respondent’s gender (male=1, female=0)
Respondent’s marital status (married: spouse present=1, married: spouseabsent=1, widowed=0, divorced=0, separated=0, never married=0)age
incomeRespondent’s age
Respondent’s income of all members of the family during the past 12
months before taxes

working

Respondent’s working hour per a week last 12 months

children

The number of children which respondents havereligion

How often attend religions services (every week=4, almost every
week=3, once or twice a month=2, a few times a year=1, never=0)

identity

How important is being to your identity (extremely important=4, very
important=3, moderately important=2, a little important=1, not at allimportant=0)

Note. The table here is made by the author based on the information from ANES (n.d.).

4. Model / Conceptual Framework
According to Riker and Ordeshook (1968), the calculus of voting which predicts
political behavior includes some different factors. In the field of public choice theory, lotsof studies and research have been using the model of voting. The calculus of voting is:
R = (BP) – C + D [3]where R is the reward that an individual voter receives from his act of voting, B is thedifferential benefit that an individual voter receives from the success, P is the probability
that the citizen will bring about the benefit by voting, and C is the cost to the individualof the act of voting. The factor of education is not included directly in the calculus ofvoting; however, Rosenstone and Wolfinger’s study (1980) estimated that more education
helps to reduce the difficulty and cost of participating in politics, which applies to C, the23
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

cost to the individual of the act of voting.
In addition, Figure 1 is the conceptual framework of my analysis. Jackson (1995)
used the framework to estimate the effect of education on voting turnout and fourintermediate variables: civic duty, political efficacy, political awareness, and registration
status. My study uses the same framework as Jackson (1995) and compares the estimation
results.

Figure 1
Conceptual Framework of this Analysis
Civic duty

Political efficacy

Education

Turnout
Political awareness

Registration status

Note. The figure 1 is made by the author based on the information from Jackson (1995)

5. Context of the Country and Education Sector
This chapter explains the general status of economy, society, and educational
sector in the United States. Table 1 represents the basic economic and social data in the
United States. The total population is about 300 million and population growth rate is
0.4%. It can be said that the population is slightly increasing. From the aspect of economy,
annual GDP growth rate is 2.1% and GDP per capita is about 60,000. Moreover, only

24
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

0.2% of people live under $2.15 a day. It seems like the United States is one of thewealthiest countries in the world and there are few absolute poverties in the country. In
addition, the primary completion rate is 101%, so that every child would receive
education.
According to the NCES7 (n.d.), The United States has mainly three structures of
its educational system. The first one is elementary (or primary) education. It contains
kindergartens, nursery schools, and elementary school. Elementary school is compulsory
education and it starts when children grow up to 6 years old. The second one is secondary
education. The part applies to compulsory education too and continues to 17 years old. It
contains 4-year high schools, middle schools, junior high schools, and senior high schools.
It is because the structure of elementary and secondary education differs from states tostates. The majority of the educational system is 6-3-3, but it has many varieties by state,
8-4, 6-6, and 4-4-4. Students who finish these elementary and secondary education finallyreceive high school diplomas. Furthermore, the third and last part of educational structure
is postsecondary education. It can be separated into undergraduate programs, community
colleges, vocational/technical institutions, master’s degree studies, doctor’s degreestudies, and other professional schools.
Figure 2 is the annual graph of gross primary school enrollment rate in the UnitedStates. Referring to that, the rate has been keeping about 100% since 1980. In addition,according to Figure 3, the gross secondary school enrollment rate keeps at a high level
for a long time. Those three data represent that elementary and secondary education are
already penetrated into society in the United States. Last but not least, in the United States,

7

National Center for Education Statistics is the organization’s name. They collect andanalyze educational data in the United States and other nations.

25
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

receiving higher education is also common among citizens. According to Figure 3, thegross tertiary8 enrollment rate has been increasing. Compared to 1973, the enrollment
rate increased by 1.5 times in 30 years. It can be suggested from Figure 4 that people cantake higher education in along with spreading lower education such as primary andsecondary education. However, recently the expenditure for the educational sector has
decreased compared to 50 years ago. In addition, Figure 5 represents gender differencesof tertiary school enrollment rate. According to the data, for females, the gross enrollment
rate has rapidly been increasing since the 1970s. The rate was only 42% in 1973 and it
became 102% in 2020. Despite its multiplying, the male’s enrollment rate has not been
increasing compared to female data. Also, periods that exceed the number of female’s
enrollment rate are just from 1973 to 1978. It shows the recent progress for women’ssocial advancement. It becomes easier for women to get higher education with social
development in the United States. Figure 6 is the graph of educational expenditure as apercentage of GNI9. The latest percentage is 4.4%, three fifth of the rate in 1973. It meansthat governmental expenditure on the education sector is decreasing even though thenumber of people who receive compulsory and higher education in the United States.
Figure 7 is the graph of voting rate among G7 countries, the United States,
Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Japan. All countries except Japan adopt a system ofvoting registration. According to Figure 6, the voting rate among people who registeredis higher than other G7 countries. However, the voting rate among holders of voting rights
is much lower than other G7 countries.

8

Tertiary (education) means higher education than secondary education including

university, college, and vocational/technical institution.
9

Gross National Income (GNI) is a total amount of money that the country’s people andbusinesses earned.

26
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

One of the most prominent problems facing the United States is Ethnic-racialsocialization and racial discrimination. In the United States, the revision of racial
discrimination has been rising for a long time such as Black Lives Matter. Paradoxically,
there is still racism, discrimination, and racial inequality. Some researchers indicate thatracism and discrimination exist in the field of education. Wang et al. (2020) analyzed theimpact of parental socialization on their children’s academic success. The study metaanalyzed 37 researches about the relationship between ethnic-racial socialization andacademic outcome. It separates results by moderators, the measurement of socialization,
development period, race/ethnicity, and academic outcome. The study concluded there isa positive relationship between ethnic-racial socialization and academic outcomes.
However, the relationship may change by the student’s characteristics and placed
environment such as ethnic groups, developmental age of socialization, and special
academic outcome. Moreover, from aspects of ethnicity and race, students of Black /African American receive the strongest effect of the relationship between socialization
and academic outcome. In addition, it has the strongest effect for secondary school anduniversity students. In short, the ethnic-racial socialization has an effect on children’s
academic outcome and it differs by race. Black people tend to be affected by ethnic-racialsocialization more strongly than other ethnic groups. Also, separated by thedevelopmental period, secondary and university students get the strongest effect.

Table 2
Basic Information of the United States
Value
Population, total
Population growth (annual %)333,287,557
0.4

27THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

GDP per capita (constant US$)GDP growth (annual %)Poverty headcount ratio at $2.15 a day (2017 PPP) (% of population)
Primary completion rate, total (% of relevant age group)
Government expenditure on education, total
Unemployment, total (% of total labor force) (modeled ILO estimate)

62,866.7
2.1
0.2
101
12.6
3.6

Note. Table 1 is made by author based on the data from World Bank (n.d.). Poverty
headcount ratio at $2.15 a day is the data in 2021. Primary completion rate andGovernment expenditure on education are the data in 2020.

Figure 2
Primary School Enrollment Rate, 1973-2020.

School enrollment, primary (% gross)
120
100
80
60
40
20

1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019

0

Note. The figure is made by author based on the data from World Bank (n.d.).

Figure 3
Secondary School Enrollment Rate, 1973-2020.

28
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

School enrollment, secondary (% gross)
120
100
80
60
40
20

1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019

0

Note. The figure is made by author based on the data from World Bank (n.d.).

Figure 4
Tertiary School Enrollment Rate, 1973-2020.

School enrollment, tertiary (% gross)
100
80
60
40
20

1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019

0

Note. The figure is made by author based on the data from World Bank (n.d.).

Figure 5
Tertiary School Enrollment Rate, male (blue) and female (orange), 1973-2020.

29
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

School enrollment, tertiary, male and female(% gross)
120
100
80
60

40
20

1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019

0

Note. The figure is made by author based on the data from World Bank (n.d.).

Figure 6
Educational Expenditure (% of GNI), 1973-2020.

education expenditure (% of GNI)
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

2019

2017

2015

2013

2011

2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

1997

1995

1993

1991

1989

1987

1985

1983

1981

1979

1977

1975

1973

0

Note. The figure is made by author based on the data from World Bank (n.d.).

Figure 7
Voting Rate in the United States, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022.

30
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

Voting Rate among G7 countries (%)
100
90
80
70

60
50
The United

Germany

States (2020)(2021)

France (2022)

The voting rate who have voting rights

UK (2019)

Italy (2022)

Japan (2021)

The voting rate who complete voting registration

Note. The figure is made by author based on the data from DeSilver (2022).

6. Estimation Techniques
6.1 Index of the Political Awareness, Civic Duty, Political Efficacy, and Registration
In the estimation, there are five specific dependent variables (or intermediatevariables) that represent voter’s consciousness for politics, political awareness, civic duty,
internal and external political efficacy, and voting registration. These indexes consist of
the respondent’s several answers according to the well-known measurements Rosenstoneand Hansen (1993) made. Rosenstone and Hansen (1993) evaluate these five variables asprominent. For example, for the sense of civic duty, they used the 5-leveled answer of aquestion: “If a person doesn’t care how an election comes out then that person shouldn’t
vote in it”. They quantified the sense of civic duty by 5-point scale from the answer. As
well as the civic duty scale, internal political efficacy scale is constructed by several
answers. According to Niemi, Craig, and Mattei (1991), they produced an index byfollowing four questions from 1988 ANES survey: “I consider myself to be well qualified

31
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

to participate in politics”, “I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of the important
political issues facing our country”, “I feel that I could do as good a job in public office
as most other people”, and “I think that I am better informed about politics andgovernment than most people”. By using these four questions, they created 17-point scaleof internal efficacy.
However, as mentioned above, contents of ANES survey are revised every year
following trends and public opinion. Thus, there are few questions which are exactly thesame as the former survey. Having said that, I recreated these indexes based on the datafrom 2020 ANES survey. For civic duty scale, I recreated the index that makes visible thethoughts for voting. It is constructed by two questions. The first one is: “How strongly do
you feel that voting is a duty?” with three choices: very strongly, moderately strongly, ora little strongly. The second one is “For you personally, is voting mainly a duty, mainly achoice, or neither a duty nor a choice?”. Therefore, civic duty index of my study is 4point scale. For internal efficacy, I made a 5-point scale index. It is constructed by one
question, “I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of the important political issues
facing our country” with five choices. Similar to this, I also recreated a 10-point scale
external efficacy index. There are two questions; the first question is “People like me
don’t have any say about what the government does” with five choices; the second
question is “I don’t think public officials care much what people like me think” with fivechoices. Finally, the index of political awareness is made by two questions; “Howinterested would you say you are in politics? Are you [very interested, somewhat
interested, not very interested, or not at all interested]?” with four choices, and “Somepeople don’t pay much attention to political campaigns. How about you? Would you saythat you have been [very much interested, somewhat interested or not much interested/

32
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

not much interested, somewhat interested or very much interested] in the political
campaigns so far this year?” with three choices. The index of political awareness has a 7point scale. For voting registration, I used the same question and made a 2-point scale ofregistration index (or a dummy variable). There is just one question for the index, “Areyou registered to vote at this address, registered at a different address, or not currently
registered?

6.2 Ordinary Least Squares
Referring to Jackson (1995), there are mainly two types of models, to estimate
the relationship between education and turnout, and five intermediate variables, politicalawareness, civic duty, external/internal political efficacy, and registration status. For the
first step of analyzing intermediate variables excepting registration status, it can be used
the ordinary least squares (OLS) as follows:
Y = α0 + β1X1 + β2X2 + … + βnXn + ε [4][4] estimates the impact of education on these civic variables considered as five of themost prominent explanations of voting behavior. Hence, Y is the five variables, politicalawareness, civic duty, internal/external political efficacy, and registration status. X1 is thehighest education respondents have ever received before, X2 to Xn are control variables,and ε is an error term. To provide adequate control, Jackson (1995) introduced several
measures of respondent’s characteristics as control variables. They are income, age, race,
gender, marital status, residential stability, partisan intensity, and region of residence.

6.3 Probit Regression
For the estimation of the impact of education for voting behavior, Jackson (1995)

33
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

used probit model. As Franklin (2004) noted it cannot use OLS regression when thedependent variable is a dichotomous variable, showing whether the respondent voted ornot, Therefore, the estimation can be biased if we use OLS. Therefore, based on his study,
the following estimation formula is used:
Probit [Y = φ (α + β1X1 + β2X2 + … + βnXn + ε )] [5]where Y is the respondent’s latest voting behavior, X1 is the highest education respondents
have ever received before, X2 to Xn are control variables, and ε is an error term. In addition,
one of the five intermediate variables, registration status is also a dichotomous variable.
Therefore, estimation of the intermediate variable, registration status is the same as [5].
The formula consists of the respondent’s latest voting behavior as Y, the highest education
respondents have ever received before as X1, X2 to Xn are control variables, and ε is anerror term. To provide adequate control, Jackson (1995) introduced several measures of
respondent’s characteristics the same as other intermediate variables, such as income, age,
race, gender, marital status, residential stability, partisan intensity, and region of residence.

6.4 Instrumental Variable Methods
According to Khandker, Koolwal and Samad (2010), the equation using
instrumental variables would be estimated as follows. The first-stage regression is:
Ti = γZi + φXi + ui [6]where Ti is a variable that indicates how much the respondent has been treated or not,which means the highest education achieved in this study. Zi is an instrumental variable
to isolate the treatment variable from other unobserved characteristics which affects theresult. Xi is control variables of other respondent’s characteristics, and ui is an error term.

34
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

The second-stage regression is:
Yi = αXi + βTi + εi [7]where IV estimates β which is the outcome of Ti. As it is mentioned above, Ti is avariable that indicates how much the respondent has been treated or not, which means thehighest education, Xi is control variables of other respondent’s characteristics, and ui isan error term. Fundamentally, the same control variables are used in two regression
formulas. Furthermore, Zi, IV should fulfill two conditions as follows:
1. Zi correlated with Ti: cov(Z,T) ≠0
2. Zi uncorrelated withε: cov(Z,ε) = 0
In addition, I also estimate the influence of education by race: black, white,native, asian, islander, and hispanic. The previous research by Jackson (1995) did not
estimate the effect of education for different racial groups separately. Therefore, theestimation by race in my study adds unique perspectives to the literature.

7. Descriptive Statics
Table 2 shows descriptive statistics of people in the United States. According toTable 2, the average for respondent’s year of schooling is about 11 years. Also, theaverage of year of schooling for respondent’s spouse is about 8 years. In addition, fromracial aspects, the percentage of respondents who answered the own identity as White(white) is bigger than other races, such as Black / African American (black), American
Indian (native), Asian American (asian), Native Hawaiian or another Pacific Islander(islander), and Latinx / Hispanic (hispanic). Moreover, indices which I made haveseveral characteristics according to Table 2. The mean value of index of how much

35
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

people think voting is a duty for citizens (duty) shows that more than half consider
voting is a duty. The same thing could apply to other indices, internal efficacy(int_efficacy), external efficacy (ext_efficacy), political awareness (awareness), andvoting registration status (registered). Especially registration status, the mean value isabout 0.9. It is natural that people who seek voting need the registration before election.
Other control variables, for example, the average of working hour per a week
(workhour) 26. The average of gender dummy variable (sex) is 0.45. It shows the survey
has few unbalances of gender ratio. Also, the average of marriage dummy variable(marriage) is 0.52 which shows about half of respondents have married. In addition, theaverage of family income (income) is about 28,000 USD. The average of region dummy
variable (south) is 0.28 which means the survey has more people living in the north thanpeople living in south. The number of children aged 0 to 17 (children) ranges from 1 to4 people, but no or 1 child is on average. The average of years which respondents
registered at present location (closing) is 2.05. In addition, the average of year which
respondents living in the present community (stability) widely ranges from 0 to 40
years.

Table 3
Descriptive Statics
Observation

Mean

S.D.

Min

Max

vote

8,280

0.728382

0.444821

0

1

sex

8,280

0.454469

0.497953

01marriage

8,280

0.521981

0.499547

01children

8,280

0.5332126

1.313558

04

36
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

education

8,280

7.316908

3.63354

0

21

spouse_educ

8,280

4.128986

4.19791

021

workhour8,280

26.16957

21.30816

0

150

white

5,963

0.916546

1.028835

0

1

black

726

0.284058

1.088759

01native762

0.288406

1.089612

0

1

asian

271

0.230676

1.076796

01islander172

0.21715

1.073321

01

hispanic

762

0.092029

0.2890843

01

religion

8,280

1.700362

1.968639

05closing

8,280

2.054831

1.27786503stability

8,280

18.31993

14.52136

040

identity

8,280

2.753623

1.43040805income8,280

10.99758

7.635161

0

22

south

8,280

0.288527

0.453105

0

1

duty

8,280

2.725242

1.208334

04

int_efficacy

8,280

3.321256

1.318083

05

ext_efficacy

8,280

6.404589

2.948743010awareness

8,280

4.341787

1.347146

0

7

registered

8,280

0.9120773

0.2831996

01

Note. The table here is made by the author based on the information from ANES (2020).
Mean means average, S.D. means standard deviation, Min means the minimum value,and Max means the maximum value.

37
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

8. Findings
This chapter starts with an explanation of the results on the relationship between
education and voting turnout as estimated by OLS, probit regression, and IV. In Table 4,
the results of IV show the causal relationships. The coefficients of years of schooling of
all OLS, probit regression, and IV estimations were statistically significant at the 1% level.
For the IV estimates, if the year of schooling (education) increases by one year, theprobability of voting (vote) increases by 6.1% points. The effect of education on voting
turnout gets greater after controlling for the endogeneity of education. In addition, thecoefficients of intermediate variables are positive and statistically significant; showingthat they greatly affect people’s voting behavior. In the IV estimation, if the index of civic
duty for voting (duty) increases by one point, the probability of voting (vote) increases by
12.1% points. The IV result shows that if the index of internal efficacy (int_efficacy)
increases by one point, the probability of voting (vote) increases by 31.7% points.
Furthermore, if the index of external efficacy (ext_efficacy) increases by one point, theprobability of voting (vote) increases by 7.4% points. If the index of political awareness(awareness) increases by one point, the probability of voting (vote) increases by 10.5%
points. Finally, if the index of voting registration status (registered) increases by one point,
the probability of voting (vote) increases by 119.4% points. Interestingly, all of the OLS,
probit regression, and IV results fulfill statistical significance at 1% level for thecoefficients of the intermediate variables10.
Table 5 shows the estimation results of the relationship between education and

10

Results are similar in IV estimation by gender estimated by IV regression. They are

introduced in Table A2 in Appendix

38
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

five intermediate variables in comparison with results from Jackson (1995)11. To comparewith the previous study, I estimated the relationship with the same control variables, but
my estimation uses IV. According to Table 5, if the year of schooling (education) increases
by one year, the index of civic duty for voting (duty) increases by 6.5% points. Also, if
the year of schooling (education) increases by one year, the index of internal efficacy(int_efficacy) increases by 6.8% points. Additionally, if the year of schooling (education)
increases by one year, the index of external efficacy (ext_efficacy) decreases by 3.7%
points. Moreover, if the year of schooling (education) increases by one year, the index ofpolitical awareness (awareness) decreases by 4.1% points. Last but not least, if the yearof schooling (education) increases by one year, the index of voting registration status(registered) increases by 8.1% points. All of the intermediate variables except external
efficacy fulfill statistical significance at 5% level. All intermediate variables of Jackson(1995) were statistical significance at 5% level and the effect was positive.
In addition, Table 6 shows the estimation results on the influence of education
on voting and intermediate variables separated by races. Regarding the effect of education
on voting behavior, the coefficient of education for White people is 8.9% points, about
0.4% points more than the one in the general estimation including all races. Also, only
White people and islander have the coefficients of education with statistical significance.
Moreover, people of Black / African American and Native American have greater effectsof civic duty on voting behavior to other races. The coefficients of education for Black /African American and Native American are 24.8% points and 23.2% points respectively.
They are about twice as large as the one for all races and 2.5 times as large as the one for
White people. In addition, the effect of registration on voting behavior is different by race.
11

The table includes all control variables is introduced in Table A1 in appendix.

39
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

The coefficient of registration for Black / African American is about 176.6% points,
which is bigger than the one for all races and White people by about 60% points. (SeeTable 6 for the details of each result)
Table 7 shows the estimation results using IV on the effect of years of schoolingon five intermediate variables. It shows some differentiation between respondent’s races.
The effect of education on civic duty among Asian American is about 19.9% points which
is more than twice as large as the one for all races. The statistically significant negative
effect of education on political awareness is estimated among White people withstatistical significance. Similar to political awareness, the negative effect of education on
external efficacy is observed among White people; additional years of schoolingdecreases external efficacy by 8.2% points. However, in spite of external efficacy, Native
American receive more effect of education on internal efficacy about 9.7% points.
Furthermore, I found that Black / African American shows little influence of education
on voting registration, Native American has the coefficient of education on voting
registration about 5% larger than the one for all races (See Table 7 for the details of eachresult). The p values from the Durbin-Wu-Hausman chi-sq tests are under 0.01 in all IV
estimations. It indicates that my estimation rejects the exogeneity. In addition, there is no0.00 of Wald test of exogeneity. Therefore, it also indicates that my estimation rejects thenull hypothesis of no endogeneity.

Table 4The Effect of Education on Voting Estimated by OLS, Probit, and IV
(1)

(2)

(3)

OLS

Marginal effects Marginal effects

40
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

education

duty

int_efficacy

ext_efficacy

awarenessregistered

sex

age

workhourmarriagechildrenreligion(Probit)(IV Probit)

0.0114***0.0101***

0.0613***(0.0012)(0.0019)(0.0219)0.0274***0.2811***0.122***(0.00339)(0.0152)(0.0162)

0.0987***0.7563***0.3426***(0.00386)(0.0182)(0.0210)0.0225***0.0177***0.0863***(0.00172)(0.00785)(0.00807)

0.0309***0.2773***0.132***(0.00348)(0.0162)(0.0162)

0.3932***0.268***

1.195***(0.0253)(0.0988)(0.105)-0.025***-0.0216***-0.0933***(0.00776)(0.0358)(0.0360)-0.0061-0.0055-0.0288(0.00467)(0.0215)(0.0215)0.00005-0.0003-0.00103(0.000191)(0.000889)(0.00101)

0.0297*0.0313*0.128***(0.0115)(0.0503)(0.0387)-0.0064**-0.052*-0.0238(0.00337)(0.0151)(0.0151)

0.0035*0.0036*0.0157*

41
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM(0.00199)(0.00948)(0.00948)

0.0048***0.00435***

0.0185***(0.0006)(0.0006)(0.0096)-0.027***-0.024***-0.102**(0.00881)(0.0396)(0.0400)

0.0262***0.0222***

0.0961***(0.00580)(0.0233)(0.0235)-0.00120.00040.00102(0.000303)(0.00135)(0.00143)

0.00290.00330.0207(0.00281)(0.0131)(0.0134)-0.0612***-0.0558***-0.230***(0.0160)(0.0646)(0.0670)-0.0625***-0.0537***-0.217***(0.0156)(0.0615)(0.0647)-0.0076-0.0016-0.0373(0.0208)(0.0948)(0.0962)-0.0262-0.0197-0.0902(0.0277)(0.123)(0.122)-0.463***-3.671***-3.801***(0.0241)(0.119)(0.135)Observations

8,280

8,280

8,280

R-squared

0.3896

incomesouth

closingstability

identity

black

nativeasianislanderConstant

Wald test of exogeneity (corr

0.71

42
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM= 0)

Note. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *, **, and *** signify statisticalsignificance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent level, respectively. Marginal effects are values
which use averaged across explanatory variables other than the focal independent variable.

Table 5The Effect of Education on Five Intermediate Variables with the Comparison of Jackson(1995) and My Study Using IV
(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

duty

int_efficacy

ext_efficacy

awarenessregistered(marginal
effects, IV
probit)Education (1995)

0.083**

0.095**

0.071**

0.557**

0.227**(5.55)(10.32)(7.39)(19.07)(9.10)

0.065**

0.0686***-0.0371-0.0412***0.0815***(0. 01186)(0.00409)(0.00919)(0.00412)(0.000574)

0.568***

0.680***

0.567***

0.499***

0.494***(0.00771)(0.0276)(0.00848)(0.0273)(0.0506)

Observations

8,280

8,280

8,280

8,280

8,280

R-squared

0.08960.02090.01480.0746

0.5833

Durbin-Wu-

0.00160.00170.00790.00380.8 (Wald test of

Education (2020)

Constant

Hausman chi-sq test

exogeneity; corr

(p-value)

= 0)

43
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

Note. t values are in parentheses for 1995 and standard errors in parentheses for 2020. *,**, and *** signify statistical significance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent level, respectively.
Marginal effects are values which use averaged across explanatory variables other than
the focal independent variable. Durbin-Wu-Hausman chi-sq test (p-value) shows theresult of the test to determine whether endogenous regressors in the model are in fact
exogenous.

Table 6The Effect of Education on Voting Separated by Races Estimated by IV
(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

Marginal

black

white

nativeasianislanderhispanic

0.0613***0.00830.0664***0.0426

0.05540.276***

0.0426(0.0219)(0.0942)(0.0234)(0.0419)(0.0881)(0.0580)(0.0419)0.122***

0.248***

0.0965***0.232***

0.132-0.08430.232***(0.0162)(0.0571)(0.0197)(0.0475)(0.0865)(0.0930)(0.0475)

0.3426*** 0.3174*** 0.1125***

0.378***

0.414***

0.08530.378***(0.0210)(0.0270)(0.0592)(0.109)(0.140)(0.0592)

0.0863*** 0.0625**

0.0823***0.0770***0.05750.169***

0.0770***(0.00807)(0.0244)(0.00995)(0.0247)(0.0490)(0.0613)(0.0247)0.132***

0.02690.156***-0.01800.284***

0.0588-0.0180(0.0162)(0.0589)(0.0196)(0.0492)(0.0878)(0.0968)(0.0492)

1.195***

1.766***

1.164***

1.310***

1.489***-0.6891.310***

effect(allraces)

education

duty

int_efficacy

ext_efficacy

awarenessregistered(0.0687)

44
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM(0.252)(0.548)(0.692)(0.252)-3.867*** -3.985***-3.301***-3.938***-3.725***-3.301***(0.135)(0.609)(0.170)(0.348)(0.878)(0.976)(0.348)

8,280

726

5,963

762

271

172

762

Wald test of 0.71

0.05

0.49

0.95

0.83

2.73

0.95

Constant

Observations(0.105)(0.309)-3.801***(0.138)exogeneity(corr = 0)

Note. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *, **, and *** signify statisticalsignificance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent level, respectively. Marginal effects are values
which use averaged across explanatory variables other than the focal independent variable.

Table 7The Effect of Years of Schooling on Five Intermediate Variables Estimated by IV
(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

Marginal

black

white

nativeasianislanderhispanic

0.065**

0.0373***0.0691***0.0296***

0.1998***0.14040.0373(0. 01186)(0.0121)(0.00436)(0.0114)(0.0213)(0.0276)(0.0114)0.0686***

0.11250.0684***

0.0973**0.0308-0.0090.0973**(0.00409)(0.0146)(0.00477)(0.0142)(0.0258)(0.0310)(0.0142)-0.0371

0.0909-0.0827**-0.1051

0.1316-0.2636-0.1051(0.00919)(0.0319)(0.0108)(0.0312)(0.0557)(0.0700)(0.0312)-0.0412*** -0.0677-0.0544*** 0.0351-0.0345-0.1449

0.0351(0.00412)(0.00498)(0.0241)(0.0316)(0.0133)

effects
duty

int_efficacy

ext_efficacy

awareness(0.0122)(0.0133)

45
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

registered

0.0815***-0.0205

0.0609*0.0987**0.2146***

0.15370.1416***(0.000574)(0.00209)(0.000620)(0.00215)(0.00357)(0.00414)(0.00215)

0.568***

0.680***

0.567***

0.499***

0.494***

0.401***

0.499***(0.00771)(0.0276)(0.00848)(0.0273)(0.0506)(0.0530)(0.0273)

Observations 8,280

726

5,963

762

284

172

762

R-squared

0.447

0.611

0.653

0.687

0.780

0.653

(IV probit)

Constant

0.582

Note. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *, **, and *** signify statisticalsignificance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent level, respectively. Marginal effects are values
which use averaged across explanatory variables other than the focal independent variable.

9. Discussion
According to Chapter 8, it is obvious that education has the causal relationshipwith voter’s turnout behavior; if the year of schooling increases, the probability of voting
also increases. The IV estimate shows that an additional year of schooling increases theprobability of voting by 6.1% points (See Table 4 for the details of each result). The
coefficient of education is about 5% points bigger than coefficients estimated by OLS andprobit regression. This maybe because my study uses IV which deals with endogeneity ofeducation. In addition, all five intermediate variables which I used are positively
correlated with the probability of voting (See Table 4 for the details of each result). Thesefindings are almost the same as the previous study (Jackson, 1995) that I retrieved from.
However, looking at the effect of five intermediate variables, the coefficient ofeducation was negative or statistically insignificant. The effect of education on otherintermediate variables are smaller than the one of Jackson’s (1995) previous study (See46
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

Table 5 for the details of each effect). The result shows education has a negative effect onpolitical awareness and external efficacy. Especially, the relationship between educationand external efficacy is proved with statistically significance. There are few studies thatshows the negative effects of education in previous researches. This could be because I
used instrumental variable methods to control for the endogeneity of education. Anotherreason could be measurement error. According to Milligan, Moretti, and Oreopoulos(2004), self-reported surveys have to consider about the possibility of respondent’s
misreporting. They point out that more educated individuals are tend to over-reporting
because of their feelings of stigma. Therefore, Milligan, Moretti, and Oreopoulos (2004)
created misreporting dummy variable to deal with the issue of self-reporting survey andshowed that misreporting and their estimation results were statistically uncorrelated. My
estimation has any consideration of bias caused by respondent’s misreporting, so that
results of negativity and statistically insignificance differ from previous studies may beaffected by misreporting.
In addition, the effects of education on some intermediate variables in my study
are smaller than the ones of the previous study. Compared to results of Jackson (1995),
the effect of education on civic duty (duty) is smaller, by about 1.8% points. The effect ofeducation on internal efficacy (int_efficacy) is also smaller, by about 2.7% points.
Furthermore, the effect of education on voting registration (registered) decreases by
14.6% points. However, it needs to be kept in mind that it is hard to make a simple
comparison between my study and Jackson’s (1995) study without consideration for thedifference in the way to make an index.
In Chapter 8, my study also reveals the effect on voting turnout has somedifferences between races (See Table 6 for the details of each result). Most interestingly,

47
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

the effect of education on voting turnout with statistical significance could not be
observed except White people and islanders. People of Black / African American, Native
American, Asian American, and Hispanic have less influence of education on turnout thanWhite people and islanders. In addition, the effect of political awareness on turnout
among Black / African American is also statistically insignificant. It means the rise ofawareness for politics and voting not a must increase voting rate among Black / African
American. The difference of estimation results between races may be caused by the gapof receiving higher education between races. According to Bureau, U. C. (2022), thepercentage of White people who have a bachelor’s or higher degree is 41.9% for the nonHispanic White population although the percentage of Black / African American who
have a bachelor’s or higher degree is 28.1% for their population. The racial gap ofreceiving higher education is one of the possible reasons to make the difference of theeffect of education on voting turnout.
However, we also need to consider the possible influence of racial dispersion ofdata. According to Figure 8, the data separated by respondent’s race possibly has someracial dispersion. Among all respondents, the share of Black / African American in thesample is 8.8%, White people 72.0%, Native American 9.2%, Asian American 3.3%,
islander 2.1%, and Latinx / Hispanic 9.2%. Figure 9 is the race of ratio who had a voting
registration according to Bureau U. C. (2021). The census data shows that Black / African
American occupied about 12.7%, 72.4% of white people, 3.7% of Asian American, and9.7% of Latinx / Hispanic. Although the census data does not have minority races, thepercentage of Black / African American is different from the sample I used by about 4%.
These dispersions possibly cause some bias for the result of my study. For example, theIV regressions estimating the effect of education on voting by race have some statistical

48
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

insignificance in specific races, Black / African American, Native American, Asian
American, and Latinx / Hispanic. If the ratio of respondents of these races increases, it
may have different values or the same result with statistical significance. Therefore, I
need to consider the potential impact the dispersion may cause.

Figure 8
The ratio of respondent’s race. The figure is made by author retrieved from ANES (n.d.).

The ratio of respondent by race

3.3%

2.1%
9.2% 8.8%

9.2%

72.0%

Black / African American

White people

Native American

Asian American

IslanderLatinx / Hispanic

Figure 9
The ratio of people who had a voting registration. The figure is made by author retrieved
from Bureau U. C. (2021).

49
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

The ratio of people who had a votingregistration

3.7%

9.7%

12.7%

72.4%

Black / African American

White people

Asian American

Latinx / Hispanic

10. Conclusion
This study tries to unveil the effect of education on turnout in the United States.
It uses the data from the survey of American National Election Studies (ANES) in 2020.
Also, it estimates the effect by using respondent’s highest education as independent
variable and the latest voting behavior as dependent variable. To deal with the issue ofendogeneity of education, the instrumental variable method is used for estimation. From
the result of estimation, there is a causal relationship between education and voting
turnout. In addition, five intermediate variables, civic duty, political efficacy, politicalawareness, and registration status affect voting behavior. Moreover, the relationship has
some differences between races. In these perspectives, this study has originality andcontribution.
The results of this study suggest several policy suggestions to improve turnout
rate. The first one is to invest more in higher education to encourage more people toreceive higher education. The study proved the positive causal relationship between years

50
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

of schooling and turnout regardless of contents of education and types of school. Also,
my estimations showed education also affects some intermediate variables, civic duty,
internal / external efficacy, political awareness, and voting registration, considered as
furthering voting behavior more with statistical significance. I showed that education has
some positive influence not only voting behavior, but also political consciousness
accelerating turnout. Therefore, governments must make the way to increase the rate ofhigher education enrollment. The second one is to establish original educational
curriculums of politics or turnouts along with the difference of race. I found that there aresome racial differentiations among the results of educational effect (See Table 5 for thedetails of each result). For example, if governments prepare curriculums growing feelingsof “voting is a duty, not choice” among students of Black / African American and Native
American, it will be one effective way for them to accelerate turnouts, because the effectof consciousness as voting is a duty on voting behavior among Black / African Americanand Native American is stronger than other races. Considering racial differentiation
preparing several curricula could be an efficient way to improve political behaviors
including turnout for different races.
The future studies can analyze the causal relationship between other educational
inputs and turnout. Education cannot be described only by years of schooling. In my study,
there is still room for considering more detailed educational inputs such as facilities,
achievements, and quality of teachers. Also, resolving racial dispersion of respondent’s
race is another issue for future studies. We may need to use data which has few racialdispersions. Future studies need to use racially equal surveys or make a specific model
which decreases the potential impact of racial dispersion. In addition, studies also haveto include the consideration of misreporting. The issue always happens when studies use

51
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

the survey type of self-reporting. Milligan, Moretti, and Oreopoulos (2004) analyzes thereason of misreporting about voting behavior. They argued the feeling of embarrassment
may cause misreporting. People who hadn’t voted feel embarrassment for their politicalbehavior and take untruthful response to get rid of the feeling. The ANES data of 2020
does not have any variable which can control misreporting. It needs to estimate and show
the accuracy of results using such as misreporting dummy variables. Moreover, there is
still room to reconsider about instrumental variables. This study uses the highest
education of respondent’s spouse as instrumental variable. However, some previous
research use different instrumental variables when they estimate the relationship between
education and turnout.

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THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

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Appendix
Table A1
The Effect of Education on Intermediate Variables with Control Variables which used in
my IV regression

education

sex

age

marriagestability

closing

identity

south

black

(1)

(2)

duty

(3)

(4)

(5)

int_efficacy ext_efficacy

awarenessregistered

0.065**

0.0686***-0.0371-0.0412***0.0815***(0. 01186)(0.00409)(0.00919)(0.00412)(0.000574)

0.03830.102***

0.03570.123***-0.00522(0.0259)(0.0294)(0.0660)(0.0292)(0.00412)

0.0456***-0.146***-0.340***-0.0840***0.00177(0.0166)(0.0188)(0.0422)(0.0187)(0.00263)

0.0951***-0.0164-0.0137

0.0786***-0.00388(0.0268)(0.0304)(0.0682)(0.0302)(0.00426)-0.001310.00108

0.00731***0.00303*** -0.00304***(0.000938)(0.00106)(0.00239)(0.00106)(0.000149)

0.176***

0.0244**0.00847

0.0919***0.174***(0.0109)(0.0123)(0.0277)(0.0123)(0.00173)

0.117***

0.0403***-0.0408*

0.0959***0.00311**(0.00903)(0.0102)(0.0230)(0.0102)(0.00144)

0.0186-0.0289-0.145**0.127***

0.00697(0.0284)(0.0322)(0.0723)(0.0320)(0.00452)

0.219***

0.0843-0.128-0.536***0.0157**(0.0466)(0.0529)(0.119)(0.0525)(0.00741)

55
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

Constant

1.706***

2.816***

6.396***

3.638***

0.559***(0.0517)(0.0587)(0.132)(0.0583)(0.00822)

Observations 8,280

8,280

8,280

8,280

8,280

R-squared

0.021

0.015

0.075

0.583

0.096

Note. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *, **, and *** signify statisticalsignificance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent level, respectively. Marginal effects are values
which use averaged across explanatory variables other than the focal independent variable.

Table A2
The Effect of Education on Voting Turnout by Gender Estimated by IV Regression
(1)

(2)

Marginal effect (IV Marginal effect (IVeducation
duty
int_efficacy
ext_efficacy
awarenessregisteredageworkhourmarriage

Probit, male)

Probit, female)

0.0586**0.0773**(0.0283)(0.0308)

0.116***

0.125***(0.0237)(0.0217)0.326***

0.346***(0.0294)(0.0283)

0.103***

0.0761***(0.0120)(0.0112)0.119***

0.150***(0.0237)(0.0218)

1.213***

1.152***(0.142)(0.144)0.0103-0.0578**(0.0332)(0.0283)-0.00205-0.00262*(0.00136)(0.00155)0.004870.129**(0.0577)(0.0519)

56
THE EFFECT OF EDUCATION ON VOTER TURNOUT AND ITS MECHANISM

children-0.00154-0.0480***(0.0259)(0.0185)-0.00340

0.00442**(0.00221)(0.00189)

0.150***

0.0641**(0.0326)(0.0314)0.0350*0.00351(0.0204)(0.0180)0.02240.0110(0.0148)(0.0125)0.0199***0.0178***(0.00546)(0.00580)-0.125**-0.112**(0.0600)(0.0533)-3.943***-3.900***(0.210)(0.175)Observations

3,763

4,517

Wald test of exogeneity

0.06

0.88

stability
closing
identityreligionincomesouthConstant(corr = 0)

Note. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *, **, and *** signify statisticalsignificance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent level, respectively. Marginal effects are values
which use averaged across explanatory variables other than the focal independent variable.