The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior

Jacob R. Brown; Enrico Cantoni; Sahil Chinoy; Martin Koenen; Vincent Pons

doi:10.3386/w31759

The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior

Jacob R. Brown, Enrico Cantoni, Sahil Chinoy, Martin Koenen & Vincent Pons

Working Paper 31759

DOI 10.3386/w31759

Issue Date October 2023

Revision Date August 2026

We estimate the effect of childhood environment on future political behavior. Linking national voter files to Census Bureau and commercial address data, we compare children who moved between the same counties but at different ages. Growing up in a county where their peers are 10 p.p. more likely to affiliate with the Republican Party makes children 4.7 p.p. more likely to do so. The effects are similar for Democratic affiliation and slightly larger for registration and turnout. Exposure during adolescence is especially influential and effects decay slightly after the first election. They reflect both state-level factors and more local forces.

We thank Ryan Enos for sharing the TargetSmart voter file data and Opportunity Insights for sharing the Infutor data. For suggestions that have improved this article, we are grateful to Raj Chetty, Ryan DeTamble, Rafael DiTella, Mitch Downey, Nathaniel Hendren, Matthew Weinzierl, Jennifer Wolak, as well as seminar and conference participants. We gratefully acknowledge generous financial support from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. Any views expressed are those of the authors and not those of the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau has reviewed this data product to ensure appropriate access, use, and disclosure avoidance protection of the confidential source data used to produce this product. This research was performed at a Federal Statistical Research Data Center under FSRDC Project Number 2747 (CBDRBFY26- P2747-R12874). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Vincent Pons
I am the cofounder of eXplain, a company in Europe.
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Jacob R. Brown, Enrico Cantoni, Sahil Chinoy, Martin Koenen, and Vincent Pons, "The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior," NBER Working Paper 31759 (2023), https://doi.org/10.3386/w31759.

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- October 4, 2023

The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior

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