{"title":"The Stubborn Unresponsiveness of Youth Voter Turnout to Civic Education: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From State-Mandated Civics Tests","authors":"Jilli Jung, Maithreyi Gopalan","doi":"10.3102/01623737231195887","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Youth voter turnout remains stubbornly low and unresponsive to civic education. Rigorous evaluations of the effects of adopting civics tests for high school graduation by some states on youth voter turnout remain limited. We estimate the impact of a recent, state-mandated civics test policy—the Civics Education Initiative (CEI)—on youth voter turnout by exploiting spatial and temporal variation in the adoption of CEI across states. Using nationally representative data from the 1996 to 2020 Current Population Survey and a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that CEI does not significantly affect youth voter turnout. Our null results, largely insensitive to a variety of alternative specifications and robustness checks, provide evidence regarding the lack of efficacy of civics test policies when it comes to youth voter participation.","PeriodicalId":48079,"journal":{"name":"Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737231195887","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Youth voter turnout remains stubbornly low and unresponsive to civic education. Rigorous evaluations of the effects of adopting civics tests for high school graduation by some states on youth voter turnout remain limited. We estimate the impact of a recent, state-mandated civics test policy—the Civics Education Initiative (CEI)—on youth voter turnout by exploiting spatial and temporal variation in the adoption of CEI across states. Using nationally representative data from the 1996 to 2020 Current Population Survey and a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that CEI does not significantly affect youth voter turnout. Our null results, largely insensitive to a variety of alternative specifications and robustness checks, provide evidence regarding the lack of efficacy of civics test policies when it comes to youth voter participation.
期刊介绍:
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA) publishes manuscripts of theoretical or practical interest to those engaged in educational evaluation or policy analysis, including economic, demographic, financial, and political analyses of education policies, and significant meta-analyses or syntheses that address issues of current concern. The journal seeks high-quality research on how reforms and interventions affect educational outcomes; research on how multiple educational policy and reform initiatives support or conflict with each other; and research that informs pending changes in educational policy at the federal, state, and local levels, demonstrating an effect on early childhood through early adulthood.