can be found at: American Politics Research Additional services and information for P resident Bill Clinton (1996), in a 1996 commencement address asked, Keywords: youth voting; voter turnout; early parenthood; lifecycle transition; political participation
Stay in School,Don’t Become a ParentTeen Life Transitions and Cumulative Disadvantages for Voter TurnoutJulianna Sandell PachecoEric PlutzerPennsylvania State University, University Park
We investigate three important life transitions—becoming a parent, gettingmarried, and dropping out or graduating from high school—on the develop-ment of civic engagement. We qualify the socioeconomic status and resourcesframeworks by arguing that effects should differ across racial and ethnic lines.We address these issues by analyzing data from a nationally representative,12-year panel study comprising more than 12,000 eighth graders in 1988(National Educational Longitudinal Survey, 1988-2000). We show that earlyparenthood can have important and lasting impacts on voter turnout manyyears later. For Whites, early parenthood leads to increased risk of droppingout of high school. High school interruption has major negative impacts onlater turnout, even when the student eventually returned to earn a diploma. Thefindings advance our understanding of the crucial period of adolescence byshowing how race and event timing condition the impact of formative lifeevents on later political participation.
Keywords: youth voting; voter turnout; early parenthood; lifecycle transition;political participation
President Bill Clinton (1996), in a 1996 commencement address asked,“What is the role of the individual citizen in making the America of our
dreams in the 21st century?” His answer to young Americans was simple:Stay in school, don’t have a child, and if you do have a child, do the respon-sible thing and form a strong two-parent family. Aside from the person givingit, the advice was unremarkable. President Clinton’s admonitions reflect well-documented challenges facing single-parent families, teen parents, and those
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 33
with limited educational attainment. Do these same factors also apply to voterturnout? We will show that the answer is yes, but a highly qualified yes.
Application of the standard socioeconomic status (SES) or resourcemodels would suggest that limited education and the social stresses that fre-quently accompany early parenthood would be associated with lower voterturnout. But this generalization fails because it ignores racial and ethnic dif-ferences. The resource model needs to be augmented to account for theresiliency to social and economic hardship shown by African Americanfamilies. In addition, resource and SES approaches do not anticipate differ-ences in civic returns to education that characterize each racial and ethnicgroup. In short, we show that the seemingly obvious impacts of teen par-enthood apply most to Whites and the effects of other resources vary sub-stantially across lines of race and ethnicity.
In making these arguments, we find that major life transitions in adoles-cence can have large and lasting impacts on later political participation. Wefocus on three teen transitions—teen parenthood, early marriage, and drop-ping out of high school—that can contribute to a pattern of cumulative dis-advantage (Dannefer, 2003) because experiencing one teen transition oftenleads to another. For example, teen parents are more than 5 times as likely todrop out of high school compared to nonparents. In turn, these events can alsoset off other processes (reduced educational attainment, lower income, livingin a low-SES context) that inhibit political participation (e.g., Verba,Schlozman, & Brady 1995), retard the acquisition of political knowledge andsophistication (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Gimpel, Lay, & Schuknecht,2003), lead to reduced political voice in opinion polls (Berinsky, 2002), andultimately reduce the ability to influence social welfare policies that mightameliorate economic hardship (Hill & Leighley, 1992).
Patterns of cumulative disadvantage are complex and no doubt differfrom setting to setting. For example, race, ethnicity, and language spoken athome may influence whether schools function to level the playing field or toexacerbate inequalities that children bring from their home and neighbor-hood. In examining the consequences of teen parenthood, early marriage,and dropping out of school, we contribute to illuminating a small piece of
Authors’ Note: The authors gratefully acknowledge that this research was supported by agrant from the Russell Sage Foundation to Plutzer and a small grant to both authors from the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. Of course, all conclusions andinterpretations are those of the authors.
this complex puzzle. In the process, we flesh out some of the importantmechanisms that lead to large class biases in the electorate and speak to the broader challenges posed by unequal participation in electoral politics(Verba, 2003).
We examine the direct effects and two potential consequences of teen par-enthood. One potential consequence is teen marriage, a frequent response toearly pregnancy, whether or not that pregnancy was planned. In many minds,early marriage is “doing the right thing” and—when it is a viable option—farpreferable to single parenthood. Does early marriage mitigate the effects ofearly parenthood? A second consequence is disruption in schooling. Teenparenthood makes it more difficult to stay in school, complete a degree, andenroll in college. We therefore examine, for the first time we believe, theimpacts of both temporary and permanent disruptions to schooling.
We use data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS),which begins with a nationally representative sample of students enrolled inthe eighth grade in 1988. The students are interviewed 2, 4, 8, and 12 yearslater, and the more than 12,000 cases allow us to assess the impact of familytransitions and high school performance on voting participation in four elec-toral periods. Although we cannot speak to cumulative impacts in later adult-hood, recent research suggests that voting behavior in citizens’ first feweligible elections sets a pattern that will influence subsequent elections as well.This pattern is well documented not only in the United States but in estab-lished democracies more generally (Franklin, 2004). Therefore, our approachand findings may have relevance beyond the borders of the United States.
Should Early Parenthood Suppress Turnout?
Adolescent parenthood leads to several negative consequences, particu-larly truncated education and eroded earnings (Adams, Adams-Tayler, &Pittman, 1989). In our data, 72% of all women who become mothers beforetheir senior year in high school dropped out of school, accounting for 51% ofall female dropouts; among men, early parenthood led to dropping out 52%of the time but accounts for only 13% of male dropouts (see also Barro,1984). Not only does the birth of a child lead to dropping out of high school,it also increases income requirements. Young parents need more money tocare for their children, but without a high school diploma, meeting basicneeds is difficult, making acute economic hardship likely. Johnson and Sum
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 35
(1987) found that in 1985, fewer than one third of all male dropouts earnedenough to raise a family out of poverty.
If SES represents the core resource for electoral participation (Verba et al., 1995), then early parenthood should clearly have at least indirecteffects on voter turnout in young adulthood. This seems like commonsense. But the common sense requires two important qualifications. Wemust consider the possibility of, first, direct effects and, second, potentialrace and ethnic differences.
Should teen parenthood have an impact after controlling for educationalattainment? Here the previous literature is less helpful. On one hand, earlyparenthood could be considered an early assumption of an “adult role”—a sign of maturity that would be concomitant with other signs of maturity,such as regular civic participation (Highton & Wolfinger, 2001). On the other,early parenthood may create acute stresses that impinge on the motivation orability to participate (Rosenstone, 1982). To our knowledge, no empiricalresearch on electoral participation has ever examined the impact of teen parenthood. We do that in this article.
With respect to race, we expect the effects of early parenthood on voterturnout to vary across racial/ethnic groups. Blacks tend to begin childbear-ing before Whites (Chen & Morgan, 1991), a difference attributed to Blackshaving less negative attitudes about nonmarital parenthood (Moore & Steif,1991) and to lower SES and neighborhood origins where becoming a parentis less related to marriage (Hogan & Kitagawa, 1985; St. John & Rowe,1990). Like African Americans, Hispanics are more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to state that they intend to become parents early in life andoutside of marriage (Trent & Crowder, 1997), though the overall researchon Hispanic nonmarital childbearing and its economic impacts is fairlymixed (Driscoll, Biggs, Brindis, & Yankah, 2001; Robbins, Kaplan, &Martin, 1985). Overall, we expect that the impact of early parenthood willbe most negative for Whites and least problematic for Blacks, with no clearexpectation for Hispanics.
Teen Marriage: A Sign of Maturity or Immaturity?
The impact of marriage on voter turnout has interested political scientistssince at least the late 1950s (e.g., Glaser, 1959; Milbrath, 1965; Niemi,Hedges, & Jennings, 1977; Straits, 1991). Yet much of the literature concernshusband–wife similarity rather than the advantages or disadvantages of marriage per se, and marriage’s precise impact on turnout remains unclear.
Among the most germane studies, Stoker and Jennings (1995) find thatmarriage reduces turnout slightly. Plutzer (2002), distinguishing betweenearly and later marriage finds no effect of marriage before 22 years old anda positive impact for more mature citizens. However, both studies derivesamples from the first wave of the Child-Adult Socialization Study (seeJennings & Niemi, 1981), which excluded high school dropouts. Thus, bothstudies’ samples are biased toward high-SES families, and neither studyexamined teen marriage, leaving open the question of how early marriagemay affect turnout and its socioeconomic correlates. Highton and Wolfinger(2001) use the Current Population Survey and therefore have a more diversesample; they find no net impact for marriage before age 25 but do not con-trol for children in the household—a factor that might conceivably suppressa positive impact of marriage. More generally, if early marriage is associatedwith dropping out of school, then studies that control for education mayobscure an indirect impact of early marriage on political participation vialower educational attainment.
The sociological literature on educational attainment provides similarlyambiguous expectations. Marriage may provide “stability, maturity, pur-pose, and other generally accepted positive byproducts,” but the financialpressures and obligations of marriage “could affect the timing of participa-tion in postsecondary education (i.e., delayed entry), a preference for part-time enrollment coupled with employment rather than full-time studentstatus” (Sanderson, Dugoni, Rasinski, & Taylor, 1996, p. 29). Thus, the literature leads to two contradictory hypotheses. Conceived as a departurefrom the best formula for economic success and upward mobility, earlymarriage may indicate immaturity and interfere with educational attain-ment. In contrast, the adult roles perspective views marriage—after con-trolling for early parenthood—as a marker of maturity and an opportunityto expand social networks, which suggests a positive effect on youth voterturnout.
As with early parenthood, we expect important racial differences in mar-riage effects. Early marriage has all but disappeared within Black youthcommunities. In 1989, Cherlin (1992) reports only 4% of 18- and 19-year-old Black women had married. Carlson (1979) argues that Blacks havelarger obstacles to early marriage imposed by socioeconomic constraints.Perhaps most important, Lerman (2002) estimates that the “returns” frommarriage in terms of financial status and economic well-being are larger forAfrican Americans than for both Hispanic and non-Hispanic Whites. Thissuggests that any positive effects of marriage might be especially highamong Blacks.
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 37
Dropping Out and Dropping Back in
Miller and Shanks (1996) show that the turnout gap between high schooldropouts and high school graduates has grown during the past 40 years andthat those without a high school diploma account for almost all of thedecline in turnout during that period. Although all studies include dropoutsas a category of educational attainment, no major study has focused specif-ically on the impact of dropping out. Moreover, because the impact andimplications of dropping out differ across generations (completing highschool was far less common among the New Deal generation), cross-sectional studies can blur the distinction between dropouts and others.
Like early parenthood and early marriage, dropping out from school is anindicator of human capital and is causally related to future events such as col-lege enrollment. Dropping out of high school is associated with high unem-ployment, low earnings, poor health, increased demands on social services, aless skilled workforce, and increased criminal activity (Natriello, 1986;Rumberger, 1987; Weis, Farrar, & Petrie, 1989). Dropping out also has directeffects on voter turnout by limiting opportunities to develop civic skills, assuggested by Brady, Verba, and Schlozman (1995). They find that involve-ment in student government and vocabulary ability, which are increasedbecause of schooling, are positively related to adult political participation.Schooling also affects adult participation by broadening social networks andincreasing social capital through membership in various organizations andclubs that directly influence adult civic attitudes and participation (Beck &Jennings, 1982; Brady et al., 1995; Verba et al., 1995). Dropping out alsoreduces the total exposure to civics instruction, which has been found to haveshort-term impacts on participation (Chapin, 2000) and civic knowledge(Nie, Junn, & Stehlik-Barry, 1996).
Hence, dropping out has indirect effects on political participation byderailing future educational plans but has direct effects by reducing opportu-nities to develop the civic and social skills needed to participate. In addition,individuals who eventually return to finish their diploma or GED are proba-bly different from those who never return and from those who complete adegree without interruption. Can students who have a temporary dropoutspell recover politically?
Dropping out of high school is more prominent among minority groupsthan White students, although this effect is mediated primarily through SES(Rumberger & Thomas, 2000; U.S. Department of Education, 2001). Beattie(2002) suggests that there are important racial differences in the relationshipbetween income returns and educational investments, implying that decisionsto continue education may also vary by race.
Not only does the incidence of early parenthood, early marriage, andeducational attainment vary across racial groups, but the views of what isnormative also differ. The American middle-class norms for childbearingare that people should not have children until their 20s and that they shouldavoid having children out of wedlock and before completing high schooland attending college (Erikson, 1998). However, for minorities, there is evi-dence of an alternative set of norms in the timing and sequencing of theselife events; both African Americans and Hispanics typically bear childrenearlier than Whites, and among Hispanics, educational achievement normsare lower than those of other groups (Erikson, 1998). Thus, adult status isachieved differently across racial and economic groups. Early marriagemay be viewed as a sign of maturity in more traditional subcultures (e.g.,many Hispanics) or in settings where high rates of single parenthood andlow marriage rates are considered to be the roots of many social problems(e.g., poor African American communities).
The perceived costs of early parenthood, early marriage, and dropping outof high school may also be lower for minorities. Adaptive family and com-munity structures (e.g., social support from extended families) may reducecosts and hardships associated with teen parenthood (e.g., Stack, 1974). Wewould therefore expect lesser impacts of social and economic hardshipamong Blacks and, perhaps, Hispanics. Because the norms and consequencesof these life events vary across racial groups, the mechanisms by which they are linked to civic participation—the data-generating process—mustalso differ. Hence, we perform separate analyses by race.
Data and Method
We utilize the NELS, 1988-2000. The NELS is produced and distributedby the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The spring 1988NELS baseline survey is a nationally representative sample of eighth gradersattending 1,052 schools, both public and private, across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The completion rate for the initial wave was 93%(Curtin, Ingels, Wu, & Heuer, 2002, p. 195). A random subset of the respon-dents was selected for follow-up interviews in 1990, 1992, 1994, and 2000,and 79% of those students selected for follow-up actually completed theentire panel (Curtin et al., 2002, p. 205). Students were asked about numer-ous topics including family situation, family relations, and political partici-pation. In addition to surveying the students, NCES also surveyed one of the
child’s parents in 1988 (87% response rate) and again in 1992 (with a 92%retention rate). Like the students, parents were asked about family situation,family relations, school characteristics, and SES.
Dependent Variable
Our dependent variable is based on questions during the third and fourthfollow-ups in the spring of 1994 and 2000 (see appendix for variable descrip-tions). Respondents were asked about their voter participation in the 1992and 1996 presidential elections, the 1993 local and state elections, any elec-tions during 1998/1999 and their voter registration in 2000. Each respondentcould report participation in up to four elections plus being registered in thespring of 2000, yielding a 0 to 5 index. We multiplied the index by 20 to geta dependent variable that ranges from 0 to 100 and reflects the percentage ofthe five acts with an affirmative report. On this scale, Hispanics have a some-what lower reported turnout (M = 46%) than non-Hispanic Blacks (53%) andWhites (55%). All have considerable variation, with standard deviations ofroughly 33% for each group.1
Independent Variables
Early Parenthood
Teens who indicated that they were a parent, pregnant, or expecting dur-ing the spring of their senior year (or what would have been their senior yearhad they matriculated without interruption) are classified as early parents.Whites were less likely to become early parents (5.2%) than Blacks (14.4%)or Hispanics (12.1%). A similar measure accounts for parenthood during the2 years following high school.
Early Marriage
Our measure of early marriage is constructed in similar fashion. Ifrespondents answered that they were married, divorced, or widowed at thetime of the senior year follow-up survey, they are coded as having beenmarried by the spring of 12th grade. If respondents were married, divorced,or widowed at the time of the 1994 survey but single in the 1992 survey,they were coded as being married sometime between the end of high school
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 39
and 2 years after. Consistent with previous literature, we find that Hispanicsare more likely to marry before high school graduation (5.2%) than areeither Whites (3.2%) or Blacks (1.8%).
Dropping Out of High School
We distinguish between dropouts who eventually returned to finish theirdiploma and those who permanently stayed out of school. One dummy vari-able indicates dropouts who left before what would be their senior year(1992) and who never returned to high school; the second indicates dropoutswho left before 12th grade but returned to finish their diploma or GED. Wefind that about 11% of Whites, 18% of Blacks, and 21% of Hispanicsdropped out at least once before 12th grade. However, about half of the Whitedropouts and 40% of minority dropouts eventually earned a diploma or GED.
Postsecondary Educational Attainment
One causal path that may link voter turnout to early marriage, droppingout of high school, and early parenthood is later educational attainment.Students who completed 4 years of higher education in 4 years plus a sum-mer would have attained their degree a few months before the 1996 presi-dential election. We can calculate whether or not each respondent earned acollege degree before any particular event in our participation scale, but wedeveloped alternative measures that we think do a better job of capturing edu-cation at a time it might affect participation. We used a detailed set ofmonthly status questions from the 1994 interview to measure educationalattendance during the 1993-1994 academic year—what would be the sopho-more year of college if a student enrolled in college directly after high school.
This measure is based on status reports during September, October, andNovember of 1993 and February, March, and April of 1994. A student whoreported full-time attendance at a 4-year college or university during all 6months received a score of 100%. A student who reported half-time atten-dance during all 6 months or full-time attendance for 3 months would receivea score of 50%. Students attending less than half-time are scored as 25% forthat particular month. Thus, the scale ranges from 0% to 100%. The scale hasa high correlation with parents’ education (r = .42). We created a similar scorefor attendance at 2-year colleges. This is negatively correlated with parents’education, indicating that if a parent completed college, children tend to score0 on this measure. On the other hand, the attendance at a 2-year college ispositively correlated with Hispanic parental education.
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 41
We believe these measures are better than traditional indicators ofdegrees earned because they capture educational experiences before 3 ofthe 5 components of our turnout scale and are roughly coterminous with a4th component. Table 1 shows that the relationship between earning a highschool degree and subsequent enrollment in an institution of higher educa-tion is a conditional one. For high school dropouts who never returned toearn either a diploma or GED, only 2% were later enrolled in a 2-year col-lege and none in a 4-year institution. For those who did return and earn adegree, the chances of being enrolled in college were only slightly higher.Regardless of race or ethnicity, those who never interrupted their schoolingwere 3 to 4 times more likely to enroll in higher education than were thosediploma holders who had one or more interruptions in their formal school-ing. For the more than 80% of those dropouts who eventually earned adegree regardless of race, that high school degree was the end of their edu-cational career rather than a means to further their education.
Additional Independent Variables
We attempt to account for all other major factors than can influence the turnout of young citizens. We control for various familial influences byincorporating a 1988 family composition variable based on student responsesabout household composition and parent reports of their marital status. Valuesconsist of living in a 2-parent nuclear household (omitted variable), a 2-parent“step” household, a 1-parent household because of divorce or separation, a
Table 1College Enrollment in 1993-1994 Among All Students Who Earned a
Diploma or GED by Race and Previous Dropout Status
No College (%) 2 Year (%) 4 Year (%) Total (%) n
Whites with diploma or GEDNever dropped out 36.2 18.6 45.2 100.0 6,754Dropped out once or more 78.6 15.2 6.3 100.0 430
Blacks with diploma or GEDNever dropped out 44.9 16.0 39.1 100.0 862Dropped out once or more 87.3 7.6 5.1 100.0 79
Hispanics with diploma or GEDNever dropped out 48.3 24.3 27.4 100.0 1,143Dropped out once or more 82.5 12.7 4.8 100.0 126
1-parent household because of the death of a parent, a 1-parent unwed house-hold, a 2-parent cohabitation household, and other, which includes multiple-generation families and foster households. Similarly, we control for threetypes of family transitions that Sandell and Plutzer (2005) found can make adifference in later turnout: divorce, remarriage, and death of a parent. We alsoinclude measures of gender (female = 1), total family income in 1987, totalfamily income in 1991 (values ranging from 1 for no income to 15 for$200,000 or more), parents’ highest degree earned (1-6), number of residen-tial moves between 1988 and 1992, church attendance in 10th and 12th grade,and estimated parental voter turnout.
Parental voter turnout is one of the most important factors for youthvoter turnout (Verba, Schlozman, & Burns, 2005) and especially for turnoutin one’s first election (Plutzer, 2002). Unfortunately, parents were asked noquestions about their turnout or campaign participation. We therefore use aprocedure described by Sandell and Plutzer (2005, especially Table A1) toestimate the probability that parents voted in the most recent presidentialelection. The General Social Survey is used to estimate a comprehensiveprediction equation. The slopes from that equation are then used to makeout sample estimates for all parents in the NELS sample.
Results
Because the mechanisms that account for voter turnout and adult rolesvary by race, we estimate separate regressions for non-Hispanic Whites,non-Hispanic Blacks, and Hispanics (because of small samples, AmericanIndians and Asians are excluded).2 To account for clustering within schools,models are reported with Huber-White robust standard errors.
In the first model, we isolate the impact of adult roles during highschool; that is, we model voter turnout as a function of control variables andmarriage or parenthood before the end of high school. To explore whetherthe impact of early marriage or early parenthood is mediated by droppingout of high school, we add the two dropout measures in the second model.Finally, in the third model, we add measures of adult roles immediatelyafter the high school period (marriage and parenthood by the spring of1994, 2 years after high school) and later educational attainment. Thisallows us to determine whether dropping out of high school and neverreturning has a direct impact on voter turnout or whether it is mediated bylater educational attainment.
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 43
Whites
The ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses and robust standarderrors for White respondents are presented in Table 2 (the table omits a largenumber of control variables to conserve space; the complete models are avail-able from the authors on request). The first model shows that becoming aparent during or prior to the senior year of high school significantly decreasesvoter turnout among White youth; White respondents who become a parentby 1992 have turnout levels 12% lower than those who are childless through-out high school. To place this in context, our model shows that White respon-dents whose parents did not complete high school have turnout levels 6%lower than those whose parents completed college. Similarly, a White respon-dent whose parent had a 25% probability of voting would have a participa-tion score 12% lower than an identical respondent whose parent had a 75%probability of voting. Thus, the effect of early parenthood is considerablystronger than parental education and equal to our estimate of politics in thehome, generally regarded as the two most powerful family predictors of polit-ical participation (Verba et al., 2005, p. 110). We note that early marriage forWhites is insignificant, having no impact on voter turnout.
Gender Differences?
It is plausible that early parenthood has differential impacts for womenand men. We therefore reran Model 1 separately by gender but found sim-ilar results for each. White women who became parents before their senioryear in high school have voter turnout levels 13% (p < .01 in one-tailed test)lower than those who remain childless, and White men who became parentsin high school have voter turnout levels 9% (p < .05 in one-tailed test) lowerthan those who did not become a parent. Although the estimates differ, theyare not significantly different from one another.
The second model includes our two measures of dropping out of highschool and produces three interesting findings. First, the coefficient for earlyparenthood has dropped from 11.2 to 4.7 and is no longer statistically signif-icant. This suggests that early pregnancy decreases voter turnout amongWhite students largely because it increases the likelihood of dropping out ofhigh school. Second, White respondents who left high school by 12th gradeand never returned had turnout levels 19% lower than respondents who neverdropped out. Last, White respondents who dropped out of high school by12th grade but returned to receive either a high school diploma or a GED haveparticipation levels 10% lower than those who graduated on time and with-out interruption.
To understand whether dropping out of high school has direct effects onvoter turnout or acts indirectly through later educational attainment, we esti-mate a third model that includes our measures of higher education enrollmentand also accounts for adult roles. The estimates of this model show that latereducational attainment has a powerful impact on electoral participation. It isespecially notable that attending a 2-year college full-time has a slightlylarger impact (10% increase) than attending a 4-year college (8% increase).3
Interestingly, both of the dropout measures remain statistically significant andonly slightly smaller in magnitude.4 This suggests that dropping out of highschool has direct effects on White voter turnout that cannot be capturedthrough diminished opportunities for later educational attainment.5
Blacks
The OLS regression analyses and Huber-White robust standard errorsfor Black respondents are presented in the middle three columns of Table 2.In contrast to Whites, the first model shows that early parenthood has nosignificant effect on Black youth voter turnout. Early marriage has a robustpositive effect for Black voter turnout; Black students who got married bythe end of high school had levels of voter turnout 25% higher than thosewho did not get married. We are not sure why this effect occurs, and it is nolonger statistically significant when we employ ordered logistic regression(p = .06, one-tailed). It is important to note that only about 2% of the sam-ple (19 Black respondents) married before the end of high school. Tenrespondents are men, 9 are women; their parents’ total family incomeranges from $3,000 to $74,999; and these respondents have wide varianceon the dependent variable. On closer inspection, we find that this smallgroup is extremely religious, but when controlling for religiosity, the posi-tive effect of early marriage persists. We suspect that married Black youthexhibit higher maturity levels, perhaps related to very traditional religioussubcultures, but we lack the data to pursue this idea empirically. Again, weestimate Model 1 separately for men and women to see if the effects ofearly parenthood and marriage differ by gender. Similar to Whites, therewere no significant differences when we stratified our sample by gender.
Our second model for African Americans again focuses on dropping outof high school. Black youth who dropped out of high school by the 12thgrade and never returned have levels of voter turnout 12% lower than respon-dents who stayed in school—in comparison to Whites, the cost of droppingout is considerably lower for Blacks. Indeed, Black dropouts who returnedto eventually complete their GED or high school diploma have levels ofvoter turnout similar to students who stayed in school continuously.6
We added the 1994 adult life transitions and educational attainment inModel 3 to determine whether dropping out of high school and never return-ing lowered Black turnout because of a decreased opportunity to achieve latereducational attainment. The third model for Blacks shows that much of theimpact of dropping out of high school and never returning on turnout actsthrough higher educational attainment.7 The coefficient for the dropouts whonever returned decreased in size and is no longer significant at the traditionallevels. Last, both college enrollment variables are significant and substan-tively large; however, 2-year college enrollment has a larger impact than 4-year college enrollment.8 Respondents who attended a 2-year college full-time have levels of voter turnout that are 20% higher than those who did notattend. Similarly, young Blacks who are enrolled in a 4-year college full-timehave levels of voter turnout that are 8% higher compared to those respondentswho are not enrolled.9
Hispanics
The analyses for Hispanics are presented in the last three columns of Table 2.In Model 1, neither early parenthood nor early marriage has a significant effecton Hispanic youth voter turnout. These variables remain insignificant when we estimate the model separately for males and females. Model 2 examinesdropping out, and the results for Hispanics are similar to those of AfricanAmericans, with those who never earn a degree having turnout levels roughly12% lower than those completing a degree without interruption. The effect ofdropping out but later returning is neither significantly different from zero norsignificantly different from permanent dropouts.10
Model 3 shows that 4-year college enrollment has a very large effect onHispanics’ turnout (a 14% increase for full-time enrollment), whereas 2-year college enrollment has no significant impact on turnout levels. Thecoefficient for those dropouts who never returned decreases by about onethird but remains significant.11 This implies that similar to White respon-dents, dropping out of high school by 12th grade has a large net effect onHispanic youth voter turnout that is only partially accounted for by latereducational attainment.12
Self-Selection?
Can the observed results, especially those concerning teen parenthoodamong Whites, be because of unmeasured heterogeneity? Those whobecome teen parents may differ from other youth in important ways that are
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 47
not captured by the 18 variables measuring fixed traits before middle schoolor the family characteristics and dynamics during the secondary schoolyears. Omitted variable bias of this kind can never be entirely ruled out, andthere is no perfect solution. However, to go beyond the data available, weexamined an auxiliary data set, the Adolescent Health Panel Study (Add-Health), that contains a single report of turnout when respondents wereroughly 19 to 25 years old. The Add-Health data permit comparing teenparents to those who became pregnant but miscarried (or males whose part-ners miscarried). If self-selection creates a spurious relationship betweenteen parenthood and turnout, then those who miscarry should show the sameeffects as those who carry their pregnancy to term. The results—available onrequest—show that those who miscarried (n = 105) were no different fromthose who reported no pregnancy at all (the logistic regression slope was asclose to 0 as one might imagine, .00087). Although the data are by no meansperfectly comparable to the NELS participation scale, they provide the onlyopportunity we know of to test this idea and offer additional confidence inour causal interpretation of the effect of teen parenthood.
Discussion and Implications
We find strong evidence that “nonpolitical” events can influence voterturnout and specified some of the causal mechanisms in ways that haveimportant implications for both our understanding of turnout and the meth-ods we employ to study it. Moreover, the effects of teen experiences are atleast as strong as the impact of family characteristics measured at the begin-ning of middle school and other family transitions (parental divorce) overwhich youth have little control. One third of the total explained variation isbecause of teen parenthood and educational experiences (35% for Whites,34% for Blacks, and 31% for Hispanics), even after allowing all sharedexplained variance to be accounted for by parental SES and other back-ground characteristics.
Race and Ethnicity Matter
We found not only that the incidence of hardship does vary across racialand ethnic boundaries but also that the effects on later turnout differ sub-stantially. Consistent with theoretical expectations derived from the socio-logical literatures on race, family, and poverty, early parenthood has a verylarge impact on the political participation of young White citizens but does
not affect Blacks or Hispanics. We also see clearly that higher educationalinstitutions, which embody the society’s hopes to level the socioeconomicplaying field, provide different civic returns to each group. In addition,returning for a high school degree or GED helps minorities recover fromearly disruptions in schooling, but this benefit is smaller for Whites whodrop out before the 12th grade.
Education Is More Complex Than Our Typical Measures
A generation ago, Converse (1972) referred to education as the “universalsolvent”—a variable that has powerful and pervasive effects on nearly everyaspect of political behavior. In recent years, political scientists have made sig-nificant strides in unpacking the concept of education into various compo-nents (Hillygus, 2005; Nie et al., 1996). Here, we contribute to that effort byshowing that the civic consequences of staying in school and dropping out arefar more complex than is typically appreciated by political scientists.
We show, for example, that the category of high school diploma is adiverse one, with roughly 1 in 6 high school graduates having dropped out atsome point. These findings suggest that political scientists would be betterserved if standard data collection efforts not only asked about final educa-tional attainment but also disaggregated high school graduates into traditionalstudents who completed school without interruption and others—includingmany GED holders—who had a less traditional track.
We also show that attending a community college is more effective inspurring later turnout than is attending a 4-year college for Whites and, espe-cially, for Blacks. Political scientists know little about community colleges,and we lack theory on which to develop reasonable hypotheses. Yet 2-yearcolleges are an increasingly important institution in influencing the socioeco-nomic resources that citizens bring to politics. In 2001-2002, 6.2 millionstudents were enrolled in degree-granting 2-year colleges compared to 9.6million in 4-year institutions (U.S. Department of Education, 2003, Table172). Unfortunately, the National Election Studies does not distinguish amongthose with some experience at a 4-year college, those with some experienceat a 2-year college, and those holding an associate’s degree; the GeneralSocial Survey identifies holders of associate’s degrees but lumps all 2- and 4-year college attendees in with those who completed high school and thenstopped. Whether or not these distinctions are important in general populationsamples is an open question—but one that cannot be tested empirically givencurrent questionnaire designs.
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 49
Some hardships that influence voter turnout are widely distributed acrossracial and economic groups. Divorce, unemployment, and residential mobil-ity are widely distributed across all economic strata, and all can lower turnout(Rosenstone, 1982; Sandell & Plutzer, 2005; Squire, Wolfinger, & Glass,1987). Presumably, the effects of short-term hardships such as divorce,mobility, and unemployment are overcome over the life course and dissipateat the individual level. More important, they do not have concentratedimpacts on the participation rates of large social groups.
The factors we examined in this article are different. They are highlyinterrelated in the lives of individuals, and they tend to be concentrated bothsocially and geographically. These interconnections create structures ofhardship that systematically contribute to class bias in the electorate.Among Hispanics, for example, high school dropouts have virtually nochance to attend a 4-year college—the only kind of postsecondary experi-ence that seems to benefit them (among those with early disruptions andwho eventually returned for a high school diploma or GED, only 4% wereenrolled in a 4-year college in 1993-1994). Because Hispanics are the mostlikely group to experience disruptions in schooling, these mechanisms tendto concentrate low turnout risk factors among Hispanics.
Among Whites, early parenthood is less common than among minori-ties. Yet even here there is evidence of the concentration of hardshipsocially and geographically because family income is a much stronger pre-dictor of teen parenthood for Whites than for Blacks or Hispanics. Second,early parenthood increases the risk of dropping out more for Whites thanothers, and dropping out has the largest negative impact on Whites. Thus,here too hardships are likely to not only cumulate over the lives of individ-uals but also to concentrate in low-income subpopulations.
We have only scratched the surface in terms of the ways that political sci-entists can explore patterns of cumulative advantage and disadvantage. Yetwe believe that our results and framing are suggestive of how systematicattention to cumulative patterns can enhance the study of political participa-tion and how it speaks to questions of equity raised by democratic theory.
Appendix
Dependent Variable
Voter turnout: VOTEPCT, created by combining answers from NATELEC, VOTEPRES,F4IVPRE, F4IVANY, and F4IRVOTE. All variables were added together to create
ALLVOTE, a 5-point scale, and 1 was subtracted from F4IRVOTE to separate thosewho abstained from voting but were registered. One was added to ALLVOTE, and thenit was multiplied by 20 to create VOTEPCT, a 0% to 100% voter participation range.
Independent Variables
Early parenthood: Combined values from F2S76 and F2D66, which asked respon-dents whether they were pregnant, expecting, or had a child during the 1992 survey.We used F3NUMCHL and F4GNCH to gather information about whether the respon-dent had any children by the 1994 or 2000 survey but not before 1992 to create twodistinct dummy variables: early parenthood by 1992 and early parenthood after 1992.
Early marriage: Combined values from F2S73 and F2D5A from the 1992 survey. Weused F3MARST to measure respondents who were married during the 1994 surveybut not before 1992, thus creating two distinct dummy variables: early marriage by1992 and early marriage after 1992.
Dropout status: Used F1DOSTAT, F2EVDOST, and F2DOSTAT to determinewhether respondents dropped by 1992 (12th grade). We then used HSSTAT, whichmeasures a respondent’s high school status during the 1994 survey, to determinewhether dropouts eventually returned to get their GED or diploma, thus creating twodummy dropout measures.
Base year family composition: Created by combining answers from BYFCOMPand BYP7. By combining these two variables, value labels for BYFAM include 2-parent nuclear household, 2-parent step household, 1-parent household because ofdivorce or separation, 1-parent household because of death of a parent, 1-parentunwed household, 2-parent cohabitation, other family.
Family transitions: Used F1S99C, F1D94B, F2P18A1, F2P18A2, F2P18B1, andF2P18B2 to compute parental divorce anytime between 1988 and 1990 (1 = yes,0 = no). Used F2S96B, F2D80B, F2P18C1, F2P18C2, F2P18D1, and F2P18D2 tocompute parental divorce anytime between 1990 and 1992. Combined F1S99B andF1D94C to compute parental remarriage anytime between 1988 and 1990. UsedF2S96C and F2D80C to compute parental remarriage anytime between 1990 and1992. Used F1S99J, F1D94J, F1S99K, and F1D94I to compute parental deathbetween 1988 and 1990. Used F2S96H and F2D80H to compute parental deathbetween 1990 and 1992.
Gender: BYS12 1 = female, 0 = male
Residential mobility from 1988 to 1992: Created from combining F1S99A, F2S96A,and F2S102. 0 = no moves, 1 = one move, 2 = two moves, 3 = three or more moves.
Sophomore status in 4-year college (sophomore status in a 2-year college): Createdfrom combining answers from ENRL0993, ENRL1093, ENRL1193, ENRL0294,ENRL0394, and ENRL0494, which asked respondents in F3 about their full- and part-time classes in either 2- or 4-year colleges for September, October, and November of
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 51
1993 and for February, March, and April of 1994 (the academic school year). Variableswere divided into 2- and 4-year colleges and coded on a percentage scale ranging from0% to 100%.
Church attendance 1990/1992: Created from F1S82, F2S106, F1D71, and F2D88.The question asked respondents during the F1/F2 surveys: “In the past year, abouthow often have you attended religious services?” 0 = not at all, 2 = several times ayear, 3 = about once a month, 4 = 2 or 3 times a month, 5 = about once a week,6 = more than once a week.
Total family income during 1987/1991: BYP80 and F2P74, the question asked parentsduring the BY (F2) study the following: “What was your total family income from allsources in 1987 (1991)? (If you are not sure about the amount please estimate)”. 1 =none, 2 = less than $1,000, 3 = $1,000-$2,999, 4 = $3,000-$4,999, 5 = $5,000-$7,499,6 = $7,500-$9,999, 7 = $10,000-$14,999, 8 = $15,000-$19,999, 9 = $20,000-$24,999,10 = $25,000-$34,999, 11 = $35,000-$49,999, 12 = $50,000-$74,999, 13 = $75,000-$99,999, 14 = $100,000-$199,999, 15 = $200,000 or more. In the event that F2P74 wasmissing, the mean was used.
Parental education: BYPARED coded as 1 = did not finish high school, 2 = highschool grad or GED, 3 = more than high school less than 4-year degree, 4 = collegegraduate, 5 = MA or equivalent, 6 = PhD, MD, or other, 7 = don’t know.
Parental voter turnout: Created from the General Social Survey (GSS). Variablesincluded in the regression analysis to predict parental voter turnout include DIVOR5indicates divorce in the past 5 years and is measured as a dummy variable where 1 =yes, 0 = no; AGE measured as a dummy variable with 20 to 28 years old as the omit-ted dummy; SOUTH measured as 1 = South, 0 = other region; EDUCATION mea-sured as a dummy variable where less than high school diploma is the omittedvariable; FULLTIME employment where 1 = yes, 0 = no; PARTIME employmentwhere 1 = yes, 0 = no; BLACK, OTH, and HISP as three separate race dummy vari-ables; and FAMINCOME as a continuous variable measured in $1,000s. The regres-sion analysis from the GSS is shown in Table A1 in Sandell and Plutzer (2005).
Notes
1. The National Education Longitudinal Survey, 1988-2000, does not classify adolescentsaccording to citizenship. We were able to identify 477 respondents who gave valid answers toall five electoral participation measures who were born abroad and whose parents were alsoborn abroad. Among these, the rate of turnout was on average about 25% lower, but more thantwo thirds reported at least one act of electoral participation indicating that they were citizens.We reran all models two different ways: First, we included a dummy variable indicating thatall members of the family were born abroad. Second, we re-estimated all models with theserespondents excluded. None of the variables changed significance levels. Although it is likelythat some of these respondents who scored a zero on the electoral measures were not citizens,
Pacheco, Plutzer / Teen Life Transitions and Voter Turnout 53
at most these would be a tiny fraction in any given model and in any case do not change thesubstantive findings.
2. Because the dependent variable has six discrete values and is not truly continuous, wealso estimated all models by ordered logistic regression. The results are essentially unchangedand, with two small exceptions noted in the text, all substantive conclusions drawn from ourordinary least squares models are confirmed using ordered logit.
3. We included a variable that measured whether or not the respondent lived at home in1994 and 2000 to account for the large impact of community college. This variable does notaffect the magnitude of the community college effect, nor does it change any of our conclusions.
4. We ran Model 3 substituting a five-category measure of final degree earned for our twoenrollment measures. All four dummy variables were significant, and the model explainedroughly the same amount of overall variance (R2 = .141 vs. .143 in the original model). But thesubstantive results are essentially unchanged: The dropout coefficients were nearly identical(B = –17.84 vs. –16.71 for the permanent dropouts and B = –7.82 vs. –7.18 for the dropoutswho eventually returned to high school). When controlling for degree earned and our twoenrollment measures simultaneously in Model 3, the enrollment measures changed to .08 for2-year colleges and .05 for 4-year colleges (vs. .10 and .08, respectively), showing that enroll-ment has large, independent effects even after controlling for degree earned, providing furtherevidence for the validity of our measure.
5. To test some direct effects of dropping out of high school, we included variables thatmeasured involvement in student government and reading proficiency scores. Neither of thesevariables made the dropout effects disappear. Thus, the impact of dropping out must bebecause of factors other than these suggested by the literature.
6. In results not shown here, we include the student government and reading proficiencyvariables to try to explain away the dropout impact on voter turnout among Blacks. As withWhites, neither variable accounted for the negative effects of dropping out of school.
7. We ran Model 3 with the degree earned variable. The permanent dropout coefficientwas nearly identical to Model 3 without the enrollment measures (B = –10.65 vs. –8.36 for thenever returned dropouts).
8. Again, we included a variable measuring whether the respondent lived at home withhis or her parents in 1994 and 2000. This variable did not change any of our conclusions anddid not influence the size of the coefficient for community college.
9. The 4-year college coefficient is insignificant when analyzed using an ordered logisticregression.
10. As with Whites and Blacks, neither the addition of the student government variable northe reading proficiency measure made the dropout effect disappear.
11. We ran Model 3 with the degree earned variable. The results are essentially unchanged,though this variable is significant (B = –9.64 vs. –8.87 previously).
12. The variables that measured whether the respondent lived at home with parents inWaves 3 and 4 did not change any of our conclusions in the model about college attendance.
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Julianna Sandell Pacheco is a 3rd-year graduate student in the Political Science Departmentat Pennsylvania State University.
Eric Plutzer is a professor in the Political Science Department at Pennsylvania StateUniversity. He is the coauthor of Ten Thousand Democracies: Politics and Public Opinion inAmerica’s School Districts.
