Growing into politics under material hardship: The impact of socio-economic problems on political socialization

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Paul Marx
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 505158386

A large literature recognizes a strong socio-economic gradient in political involvement. Voting turnout and other forms of engaging with politics tend to be lower among the poor. While this results in an unequal representation of their voices in the political process, we still know little about the precise mechanism that contribute to political apathy among citizens with low income. The proposed project will address this gap by studying the link between socio-economic problems and political involvement in a life-course perspective. The guiding question is to what extent the link between both variables should be thought of as a direct, causal one; or whether rich and poor primarily differ in their political involvement because they make different socialization experiences in their youth and childhood. Theoretically, the project builds on two core findings in previous research. First, according to the “impressionable years” hypothesis, political behaviours and orientations are comparatively malleable until early adulthood and become increasingly resilient afterwards. Socio-economic problems could thus affect political involvement at young age, but lose explanatory power during the process of habituation in prime age. Secondly, parents have been shown to influence their children through political learning and through status transmission, which contributes to participatory inequality already before voting age. The socio-economic gradient typically observed in cross-sectional data could thus be largely attributable to family background and childhood experiences.Empirically, the project makes use of large-scale panel survey data. In particular, it includes studies which survey children already at a very young age (starting at age 9). Such rarely used samples allow us to investigate a period in people’s lives where socio-economic experiences might lay (or impair) crucial foundations for growing into politics. Methodologically, we employ latent growth curve modeling to study the development of political involvement over the life-course, difference-in-difference matching techniques to identify the causal effect of individual life-experiences on political involvement, and sequence analysis to discover trajectories of socio-economic problems and political involvement.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Nadja Wehl