Collaborative Research: Divorce and the Political Gender Gap

合作研究：离婚和政治性别差距

• 批准号: 0921073
• 负责人: Sara Watson
• 金额: $ 6.13万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University Research Foundation -DO NOT USE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0921073&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Divorce; Political; Gender

The past thirty years have witnessed a dramatic transformation of women's political preferences in advanced industrialized countries. Relative to men, women's political positions--both in their support for left parties and in their support for welfare state policies--have moved steadily to the left, a phenomenon widely known as the political gender gap. What accounts for the rising political gender gap? Despite a large body of research, there is little consensus as to the sources of this trend. One prominent recent explanation argues that the rise of the political gender gap is driven by rising divorce rates. Viewing voters as responding to economic self-interest, this argument holds that as risk of divorce rises, currently married women face an increasingly uncertain future. Since women's income tends to fall after divorce, rising divorce risk effectively translates into falling expected lifetime income. Therefore, the leftward drift in political preferences has as its root the growing impoverishment of women relative to men. While several recent studies have examined aspects of the divorce-based explanation for the rising gender gap, the evidence remains mixed.This proposal outlines a quasi-experimental approach to test the hypothesis that the political gender gap is driven by rising divorce risk. The key idea is that a change in women's status upon divorce offers us a way to isolate the divorce-based source of the political gender gap from other possible factors. We exploit a largely unexpected legal change in the United Kingdom, the White v. White case, which dramatically improved divorced women's income by prescribing a new rule for allocating assets. By studying the political preferences of married women before and after the change, we test the claim that divorce shapes the political gender gap through an economic mechanism. Furthermore, by isolating groups of women most likely to be affected by the legal change, we can assess the plausibility of our results by comparing the change their political preferences to that of women less likely to be affected. With respect to broader social value, the study makes several contributions. First, policymakers and legislators of family law will find the results useful in understanding the potential electoral effects of changes in divorce law. Second, the research offers opportunities to enhance graduate student training by integrating involvement in original research into their educational program. Finally, the study contributes to the fostering of productive dialogue between political science and economics.

过去三十年来，在先进的工业化国家中，妇女的政治偏好发生了巨大的转变。 相对于男性，妇女的政治立场 - 在支持左派和支持福利国家政策的方面 - 稳步向左移动，这一现象被广泛称为政治性别差距。 是什么考虑了政治性别差距的上升？ 尽管进行了大量研究，但关于这一趋势的来源几乎没有共识。 最近的一项著名解释认为，政治性别差距的兴起是离婚率上升所驱动的。 这一论点认为，将选民视为对经济自我利益的回应，认为离婚的风险升高，目前已婚妇女面临着越来越不确定的未来。 由于妇女的收入在离婚后往往下降，因此离婚风险的上升有效地转化为预期的终身收入下降。 因此，政治偏好的向左漂移是其相对于男性的贫困越来越多的根源。尽管最近的一些研究研究了基于离婚的性别差距的解释方面的各个方面，但证据仍然混杂。该提案概述了一种准实验方法，用于检验政治性别差距的假设，即离婚风险的增加驱动了政治性别差距。 关键的想法是，离婚时妇女地位的变化为我们提供了一种将基于离婚的政治性别差距的根源与其他可能因素隔离的方法。 我们在英国案中利用了大部分意想不到的法律变更，《怀特诉白人案》，该案件通过规定了分配资产的新规则，从而极大地提高了离婚妇女的收入。 通过研究变革前后已婚妇女的政治偏好，我们测试了离婚通过经济机制塑造政治性别差距的说法。 此外，通过将最有可能受到法律变更影响的妇女群体隔离，我们可以通过比较她们的政治偏好与不太可能受到影响的妇女的变化来评估结果的合理性。 关于更广泛的社会价值，该研究做出了一些贡献。首先，政策制定者和家庭法立法者将发现结果有助于理解离婚法变化的潜在选举影响。其次，该研究提供了机会，通过将参与原始研究纳入其教育计划来增强研究生培训。最后，该研究有助于促进政治学与经济学之间的生产性对话。