Author :
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ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (799 download)
Book Synopsis Out of the Classroom and Into the Voting Booth? Analyzing the Effects of Education on Political Participation by :
Download or read book Out of the Classroom and Into the Voting Booth? Analyzing the Effects of Education on Political Participation written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation identifies and analyzes the wide-ranging causal effects of formal education on political participation in the United States. It employs a comprehensive theoretical framework in which the effects of education operate through two interdependent mechanisms. First, education is theorized to affect political participation by increasing and individual's level of knowledge and skills. Second, education is hypothesized to affect political participation by increasing an individual's socioeconomic status, which provides greater access to personal and social resources that facilitate participation. This project goes beyond previous work and recognizes that education is more than the number of formal years of schooling completed; it is a complex collection of skills, experiences, and relationships that individuals acquire throughout their formative years. Recognition of this reality allows each mechanism to be affected by a variety of educational policies, practices, and contexts, a sampling of which include credit requirements, civics instruction, and exposure to applied civic activities. Drawing on a wide variety of large-scale, nationally-representative datasets, the theoretical framework is tested in a systematic and rigorous manner using a variety of empirical approaches that allow for causal inference. Results of the empirical analyses are remarkably consistent with the theoretical framework. They demonstrate that civics instruction has a positive effect on levels of knowledge and skills and that knowledge and skills, in turn, influence political participation. The results also reveal that educational attainment affects political participation through the hypothesized mechanism. The breadth of the datasets employed in this project allow for detection of causal heterogeneity along several dimensions, including the level of the education system and the mode of political participation. By improving our understanding of the relationship between education and political participation, this dissertation provides evidence-based insights into the policies and practices that are most effective for preparing individuals to become effective participants in our democratic society.