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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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
11924.
Length: Date of creation: Jan 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11924
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H0 - Public Economics - - General J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
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Marianne Bertrand & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Sendhil Mullainathan, 1999.
"Network Effects and Welfare Cultures,"
Working Papers
9903, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
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Bertrand, M. & Luttmer, E.F.P. & Mullainathan, S., 1998.
"Network Effects and Welfare Cultures,"
Papers
201, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
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