Pre-Birth Factors, Post-Birth Factors, and Voting: Evidence from Swedish Adoption Data

Abstract

This paper analyzes a rich Swedish data set with information on the electoral turnout of a large sample of adoptees, their siblings, their adoptive parents, and their biological parents. We use a simple regression framework to decompose the parent-child resemblance in voting into pre-birth factors, measured by biological parents' voting, and post-birth factors, measured by adoptive parents'voting. Adoptees are more likely to vote if their biological parents were voters and if they were assigned to families in which the adoptive parents vote. We …nd evidence of interactions between the preand post-birth factors: the e¤ect of the post-birth environment on turnout is greater amongst adoptees whose biological mothers are non-voters. We also show that the relationships between parental characteristics, such as education, and child turnout persist even in the absence of a genetic link between parent and child. The regression-based framework we utilize provides a basis for the integration of behavior-genetic research into mainstream political science.

The intergenerational transmission of human capital: the role of skills and health

“…Corak and Piraino (2011) study the intergenerational transmission of employers. Thompson (2014) studies the transmission of health and Cesarini et al (2014) study the transmission of voting behaviour.…”

Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?

“…The adoption methodology (and subsequent sensitivity analyses) we use was pioneered by Björklund et al (2006) who studied the intergenerational transmission of income and education. Other recent papers using the Björklund et al (2006) methodology and similar data include Hjalmarsson and Lindquist (forthcoming) who study intergenerational correlations in crime and Cesarini et al (2012) who study voting behavior.…”

On the Origins of Risk-Taking

“…Since then, the Swedish data have been used to study voting (Cesarini, Johannesson, and Oskarsson, 2014), crime (Hjalmarsson and Lindquist, 2013), entrepreneurship (Lindquist, Sol, and Van Praag, 2015), and health (Lindahl et al 2015). These studies have found evidence that both characteristics of biological and adoptive parents are predictive of child outcomes.…”