The effects of voting franchise extension on education policy

Abstract

We study the effects of giving poor females the right to vote in local elections on education spending and teacher-student ratios. To estimate causal effects, we exploit a national voting reform in Norwegian local elections that removed socioeconomic restrictions on female voting rights. The identification strategy exploits heterogeneous changes in the share of females in the voting franchise from the pre-reform (1907) to the post-reform election (1910) across local governments. While US studies find positive effects on government spending of the introduction of female suffrage, we find no systematic effects on education spending, despite a significant increase in female turnout.