Presentation - De Santo, Fiorina CORRETTA FINALE

The impact of education on
political ideology:
Evidence from European compulsory
education reforms
Andrew G. Meyer
A presentation by Alessia De Santo and Camilla Fiorina

INTRODUCTION
▹Evidence from previous studies (Dunn, 2011; Weakliem, 2002; Weil, 1985)
→correlation between educational attainment and political ideology
Results:education pushes individuals to political left.
▹Problem:endogeneity of education was not taken into account →
2
Omitted Variable Bias

Conceptual associations of “left” and
“right” is correlated with education
and self-placement on the scale”
(Bauer et al., 2015).
3
2. Which indicator for political ideology?
Self identified left-right (L-R) placement on a scale
Educational attainment estimated with RDD:
compare individuals born just prior/after a
reform →conceptual associations similar
across these two groups.
1. Which measure can be used to for eudcational attainment?
Compulsory education laws
Unobserved variables (personality or
parents income/ideology) may affect
both educational attainment and
ideology.
Changes in compulsory education
laws in 20th century Europe →
exogenous shift in educational
attainment, not related to ideology.

POLITICAL SCIENCE
LITERATURE
4
Self-interest theory:
Higher levels of education → higher
incomes → right-wing identity out of
self-interest
Powdthavee and Oswald (2014)
Socialization theory:
Political attitudes are transmitted to
students through social learning
processes.
Weakliem’s (2002): core values thesis.
Development theory:
More education → more liberal ideology → more left-wing political identity
(Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Moore, 1995).

DATA
Left-right political ideology
5
Compulsory education laws
▸25 waves of Eurobarometer
surveys from October 2004 to March
2012 with a question about political
identification.
▸Face-to-face interviews on ~1000
individuals (per wave) from each
country
▹Recent papers: Borgonovi et al.
(2010), Brunello, Fabbri, and Fort
(2013), Gathmann et al. (2015).
▹18 reforms (from 1928 to 1983) in 11
Western EU Countries that
increases the min education level
by 1to 4yrs.