Past Research at ISERP
The State, the Family and Redistribution: The Political Salience of Marriage
by Rohini Pande (Economics) and Lena Edlund (Economics)
The aim of this research project is to examine the political ramifications of changing patterns of family formation. Families are amongst the most important institutions for resource redistribution between individuals. This project will examine how the decline of the traditional family has altered the income distribution and therefore the demand for state-led redistribution.
One important motivation for our research agenda is the emergence of a political gender gap in many Western countries, wherein relative to men a higher proportion of women today vote left. Out first objective is to examine whether the observed decline of marriage rates in most Western countries has by affecting the male-female income distribution led to the present day gender gap. A second objective is to investigate how the decline in marriage rates has affected parties' choice of public policy, especially Â'family value' policies. Here we shall investigate the hypothesis that parties that are ideologically differentiated on income redistribution policies will choose to adopt Â'family value' policies so as to affect marriage rates and thereby the income distribution in a way that is electorally favorable to them. Our theoretical analysis will also provide a set of empirically testable predictions; our third research objective is to use US data-sets to test the empirical validity of these predictions.
See Also
- Seed grant: Reproductive Rights and Individual Well-Being
Funded by National Science Foundation »
