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Invalid Voting and Educational Inequality in Chile

Hochhalter, Lina LU (2018) NEKH01 20172
Department of Economics
Abstract
Despite being one of Latin Americas most progressed countries and a recent member of the OECD, Chile has issues of high inequality that is apparent not least in its educational system. This paper seeks to investigate what impact educational disparities have on voting behaviour, in the context of a policy reform introduced in 2010 that shifted the voting system from mandatory to voluntary. Data on voting outcome and educational level is collected for 343 municipalities, and a dummy variable regression with additional control variables is run. As dependent variable, the percentage of invalid votes from presidential elections of 2009 and 2013 is used. The paper finds a negative correlation between level of education and invalid votes of the... (More)
Despite being one of Latin Americas most progressed countries and a recent member of the OECD, Chile has issues of high inequality that is apparent not least in its educational system. This paper seeks to investigate what impact educational disparities have on voting behaviour, in the context of a policy reform introduced in 2010 that shifted the voting system from mandatory to voluntary. Data on voting outcome and educational level is collected for 343 municipalities, and a dummy variable regression with additional control variables is run. As dependent variable, the percentage of invalid votes from presidential elections of 2009 and 2013 is used. The paper finds a negative correlation between level of education and invalid votes of the municipalities. Furthermore, findings suggest that higher educated municipalities reduced their share of invalid votes more than the less educated between the two elections. Since the regression is likely to suffer from endogeneity problems, no causal interpretations can be made. Nonetheless, results seem to indicate that education is linked to voting, and that this in turn might be affected by the electoral policy shift. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Hochhalter, Lina LU
supervisor
organization
alternative title
A study of an electoral policy reform
course
NEKH01 20172
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
keywords
Voting behaviour, Education, Policy reform, Chile
language
English
id
8935474
date added to LUP
2018-02-14 18:23:36
date last changed
2018-02-14 18:23:36
@misc{8935474,
  abstract     = {{Despite being one of Latin Americas most progressed countries and a recent member of the OECD, Chile has issues of high inequality that is apparent not least in its educational system. This paper seeks to investigate what impact educational disparities have on voting behaviour, in the context of a policy reform introduced in 2010 that shifted the voting system from mandatory to voluntary. Data on voting outcome and educational level is collected for 343 municipalities, and a dummy variable regression with additional control variables is run. As dependent variable, the percentage of invalid votes from presidential elections of 2009 and 2013 is used. The paper finds a negative correlation between level of education and invalid votes of the municipalities. Furthermore, findings suggest that higher educated municipalities reduced their share of invalid votes more than the less educated between the two elections. Since the regression is likely to suffer from endogeneity problems, no causal interpretations can be made. Nonetheless, results seem to indicate that education is linked to voting, and that this in turn might be affected by the electoral policy shift.}},
  author       = {{Hochhalter, Lina}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Invalid Voting and Educational Inequality in Chile}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}