Universal Solvent or catch-all Proxy? : Causal Evidence on the Effect of Education on Political Participation and Attitudes in Germany
Authors:   , Bömmel Nadja 
Published: September 2023

This dissertation focuses on the causal effect of education on political participation and attitudes of adults and adolescents in Germany and consists of four independent scientific articles and a synopsis. The first article (Chapter 2) “Revisiting the Causal Effect of Education on Political Participation and Interest” (co-authored by Guido Heineck) uses NEPS data and studies the long-term causal effect of an increase in compulsory schooling in West Germany. For identification, a reform after World War II is exploited in the course of which compulsory schooling was prolonged from 8 to 9 years. Being affected by this reform is then used as an instrumental variable to address the potential endogeneity of education and estimate the causal effect of an additional year of schooling on a range of political outcome measures over 40 years after the respondents finished general education. In the second article (Chapter 3) “Trust in Media and COVID-19 related News - Evidence from reunified Germany and Europe”, which was prepared jointly with Anica Kramer and Guido Heineck, we use NEPS and Eurobarometer data and examine whether growing up in a socialist country, with its limited access to free media, has a lasting impact on trust in traditional media, like press and television, and new media, such as social media, decades after the socialist regime was abolished. For identification, we exploit two features of German history as natural experiments (separation and subsequent reunification of the two Germanies and access to free West German media in the GDR). In the third article (Chapter 4) “Does Civic Education in Secondary Schooling have an Impact on Political Interest of Grade 8 Students? Evidence from NEPS” the correlation between different measures of civic education in secondary schooling in Germany and the political interest of students attending grade 8 (age 13/14) is investigated. To approximate causality, variation in the provision of civic education between different school types and federal states is used. The fourth article (Chapter 5), uses data from Aufwachsen in Deutschland: Alltagswelten (AID:A) and examines whether an increase in schooling intensity affects different political outcome measures. For identifying causal effects, exogenous variation across time and federal states induced by the so-called G8 reform is exploited. This reform was implemented by most of the German federal between 2001 and 2008 and is especially suitable for investigating the research question as it lead to a reduction of the duration of the highest track of secondary schooling from 9 to 8 years, while the overall curriculum and the total instruction time remained unchanged. Overall, this thesis shows, that, in the German context, short- and long-term causal effects of education on active political participation and political attitudes exist in adult as well as adolescent target groups. It proves to be beneficial to investigate different operationalizations of both education and political participation, to attain the most comprehensive picture. Although this dissertation contributes to the literature on Germany, multiple issues, like uncovering underlying mechanisms or digging deeper into educational content remain untouched and constitute desiderata for future research.