Upward Income Mobility and Legislator Support for Education Policies

34 Pages Posted: 25 Feb 2018

See all articles by Luna Bellani

Luna Bellani

University of Konstanz

Vigile Marie Fabella

University of Konstanz

Abstract

This paper investigates how upward mobility affects legislator voting behavior towards education policies. We develop an electoral competition model where voters are altruistic parents and politicians are office seeking. In this setting the future economic status of the children is affected both by current public education spending and by the level of upward mobility. Using a newly compiled dataset of roll call voting on California education legislation matched with electoral district-level upward mobility we find that the likelihood of a legislator voting "no" on redistributive education bills decreases by 10 percentage points when upward mobility in his electoral district decreases by a standard deviation.

Keywords: upward income mobility, education policies, legislator voting behavior, roll call votes, California

JEL Classification: I24, D72, H4

Suggested Citation

Bellani, Luna and Fabella, Vigile Marie, Upward Income Mobility and Legislator Support for Education Policies. IZA Discussion Paper No. 11324, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3129268 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3129268

Luna Bellani (Contact Author)

University of Konstanz ( email )

Fach D-144
Universitätsstraße 10
Konstanz, D-78457
Germany

Vigile Marie Fabella

University of Konstanz

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