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Upward Income Mobility and Legislator Support for Education Policies

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  • Bellani, Luna

    (Ulm University)

  • Fabella, Vigile Marie

    (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.

Suggested Citation

  • Bellani, Luna & Fabella, Vigile Marie, 2018. "Upward Income Mobility and Legislator Support for Education Policies," IZA Discussion Papers 11324, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11324
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    legislator voting behavior; education policies; upward income mobility; roll call votes; California;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods

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