Revisiting the causal effect of education on political participation and interest

ABSTRACT

Many studies suggest a relationship between education and political participation, but only some address causality. We add to this by re-examining the German case. For identification, we exploit an exogenous increase in compulsory schooling, and use data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). The data enable analyses that do not rely solely on the conversion of school-leaving qualifications into schooling duration but use the individuals’ actual length of schooling as part of their educational biographies. Our results indicate that the well-known association between education and political participation partially reflects causal effects.