A cross-national study of the influence of parental education on intention to vote in early adolescence: the roles of adolescents’ educational expectations and political socialization at home

Abstract

While empirical studies have observed a robust and positive relationship between parental education and the offspring’s political engagement in some countries, including the USA, little work has examined the mechanisms thought to underpin this relationship. Treating intention to vote in early adolescence as a proxy for political engagement, this study examines the family processes that might indirectly link parental education with adolescents’ intention to vote in our sample of 30 countries. We find that adolescents’ expectations of their own education and political stimulation at home are key factors mediating the link between parental education and adolescents’ intention to vote in most countries, although the exact nature of these indirect relations differs across countries. The intergenerational transmission of participatory advantages may well be a universal phenomenon as well as operate through the same pathway in a range of countries.