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Female Socialization: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers' Voting on Women's Issues

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  • Ebonya Washington
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    Abstract

    Economists have long concerned themselves with environmental influences, such as neighborhood, peers and family on individuals' beliefs and behaviors. However, the impact of children on parents' behavior has been little studied. Parenting daughters, psychologists have shown, increases feminist sympathies. I test the hypothesis that children, much like neighbors or peers, can influence adult behavior. I demonstrate that the propensity to vote liberally on reproductive rights is significantly increasing in a congress person's proportion of daughters. The result demonstrates not only the relevance of child to parent behavioral influence, but also the importance of personal ideology in a legislator's voting decisions as it is not explained away by voter preferences.

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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 11924.

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    Date of creation: Jan 2006
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    Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11924

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    1. Rohini Pande, 2003. "Can Mandated Political Representation Increase Policy Influence for Disadvantaged Minorities? Theory and Evidence from India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1132-1151, September.
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    13. Black, Sandra & Devereux, Paul J. & Salvanes, Kjell G, 2003. "Why the Apple Doesn't Fall: Understanding Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital," CEPR Discussion Papers 4150, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
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    Cited by:
    1. Dreher, Axel & Jensen, Nathan M., 2013. "Country or leader? Political change and UN General Assembly voting," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 183-196.
    2. Bernd Hayo & Stefan Voigt, 2012. "Explaining Constitutional Change: The Case of Judicial Independence," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201249, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).

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