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The Enfranchisement of Women and the Welfare State

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Author Info
Graziella Bertocchi ()

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Abstract

We offer a rationale for the decision to extend the franchise to women within a politico-economic model where men are richer than women, women display a higher preference for public goods, and women’s disenfranchisement carries a societal cost. We first derive the tax rate chosen by the male median voter when women are disenfranchised. Next we show that, as industrialization raises the reward to mental labor relative to physical labor, women’s relative wage increases. When the cost of disenfranchisement becomes higher than the cost of the higher tax rate which applies under universal enfranchisement, the male median voter is better off extending the franchise to women. A consequent expansion of the size of government is only to be expected in societies with a relatively high cost of disenfranchisement. We empirically test the implications of the model over the 1870-1930 period. We proxy the gender wage gap with the level of per capita income and the cost of disenfranchisement with the presence of Catholicism, which is associated with a more traditional view of women’s role and thus a lower cost. The gender gap in the preferences for public goods is proxied by the availability of divorce, which implies marital instability and a more vulnerable economic position for women. Consistently with the model’s predictions, women suffrage is affected positively by per capita income and negatively by the presence of Catholicism and the availability of divorce, while women suffrage increases the size of government only in non-Catholic countries.

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Paper provided by CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY in its series CHILD Working Papers with number wp15_07.

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Length: 32 pages
Date of creation: Jul 2007
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Handle: RePEc:wpc:wplist:wp15_07

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Related research
Keywords: women suffrage; inequality; public goods; welfare state; culture; family; divorce;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
P16 - Economic Systems - - Capitalist Systems - - - Political Economy of Capitalism
J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative
H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Doepke, Matthias & Tertilt, Michèle, 2008. "Women’s Liberation: What’s in It for Men?," IZA Discussion Papers 3421, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Graziella Bertocchi & Chiara Strozzi, 2007. "The Evolution of Citizenship: Economic and Institutional Determinants," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 009, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Raquel Fernández, 2009. "Women's Rights and Development," NBER Working Papers 15355, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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