Economic Conditions and Political Socialization

The income gradient in political participation is a widely accepted stylized fact. An open question in the debate is whether this gradient reflects a direct income effect on participation or stable differences in the propensity to participate between rich and poor voters, possibly emerging early in the life course. In other words, a knowledge gap remains concerning the relative importance of individual economic circumstances during adulthood in contrast to the economic characteristics of one’s family upbringing. This contribution therefore zooms in on the relationship between economic conditions and political socialization between childhood and young adulthood. It uses household panels to trace and explain the emergence of the socio-economic gap in political involvement. Employing variance decomposition involving both identical and fraternal twins, we endeavor to disentangle the extent to which income discrepancies can be attributed to latent background factors.