Relative age effects in political selection

Abstract

We exploit a regression discontinuity design to provide causal evidence of the relative age effect (RAE) on a long-run adult age outcome: Political selection. We find strong evidence of the RAE in politics in Finland. However, the effect is heterogeneous: We find that male candidates born early in the calendar year have a significantly higher probability of getting elected to the parliament but no similar RAE applies to female candidates nor to municipal elections. Moreover, this effect only takes place in the most competitive parliamentary districts and is present only for some parties. We also find that in all the groups where the RAE does not exist, early-born candidates are under-represented suggesting attrition of talent in the candidate placement. Overall, our results show that seemingly artificial cutoffs imposed by the government have persistent consequences even on the selection to the highest positions of power within a society.

Erasmus Exchange Program – A Matter of (Relatively) Older Students

“…The magnitude and direction of this result parallels findings in other competitive settings (e.g. professional soccer, Fumarco and Rossi (2018); professional hockey, Fumarco et al (2017); politics, Muller and Page (2016) and Tukiainen et al (2019)). We find equivalent results when we investigate RAEs by gender or educational settings in the country of origin.…”

“…Usually, one would compare the observed distribution of AQB with the reference distribution, from the general population. However, since our sample is composed of students from 22 countries, we choose as a reference a uniform distribution, as suggested inDelorme and Champely (2015).6 We cannot use the regression discontinuity design, as inTukiainen et al (2019), since it requires information on students' exact day of birth, whereas we have information on month and year of birth.…”

Forever young: Relative age effects in Belgian political selection

“…As there are both theoretical grounds (differences in competitiveness) for and empirical evidence (Tukiainen et al, 2019) of differences in the occurrence of RAEs at different levels of government, we explore a second main dataset including biographic data on all 7387 members of municipal councils in the (300) Flemish municipalities. 5 The councillors were elected in the (most recent) municipal elections of October 2018.…”

“…Politicians born early in the year (or, more specifically, early after the cut‐off date used in the education system) are overrepresented in higher positions in the United States (Muller & Page, 2016). Early‐born candidates have a significantly higher probability of being elected into the Finnish parliament (Tukiainen et al, 2019) or to reach a party leadership position at the municipal level in China (Li & Hu, 2021). Given the enormous importance of political selection for the workings of democracy (Besley, 2005), any bias in the selection mechanism deserves critical attention.…”

Are voters rational?

“…RDD has been applied widely in other political economy contexts. Recent applications include Redmond and Regan (2015) and Tukiainen et al (2018).…”