American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy
ISSN 1945-7731 (Print) | ISSN 1945-774X (Online)
Do Tuition Subsidies Raise Political Participation?
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
(pp. 354–78)
Abstract
Civic externalities motivate education expenditures, but estimates of the civic returns to large-scale education subsidies are scarce. We use 16 million financial aid applications and a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate how a tuition-free college program impacts political participation. We find that each of the 2.6 million awards increased a student's voter turnout rate by 4–12 percentage points in 2020, raising total turnout and Biden's margin of victory in the awarding state. We find evidence consistent with peer socialization, among other mechanisms, and show that the civic externalities of education spending can be large enough to sway elections.Citation
Firoozi, Daniel, and Igor Geyn. 2025. "Do Tuition Subsidies Raise Political Participation?" American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 17 (4): 354–78. DOI: 10.1257/pol.20240422Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- D91 Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
- I22 Educational Finance; Financial Aid
- I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions