Political Participation & Student Debt: How Debt is Changing Youth Participation

• In Event: Committee on Political Sociology: Political Participation

Abstract

Millennials as a cohort have some of the lowest levels of voter turnout, yet they are now the largest age cohort in the electorate. Youth voter turnout increased significantly in the 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2018 elections mobilized by candidates such as Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and Beta O’Rourke.

Home ownership, marriage and children are known predictors of higher political participation, as financial obligations to maintain a home and family foster deeper connections with one’s community, social capital and link to government services, including loans, public education, and others. Rosenstone and Hansen (1993) confirmed that controlling for other factors, home ownership lead to an increased mobilization (permanent home address) and participation (voting). While a growing literature has explored educational loans or student debt in economics and medicine, student debt is understudied in political science. The limited research in psychology, for example, shows individuals with more student loans have more liberalized views about debt in general, but no research has tied debt to voting. This research theorizes student debt functions similarly to home ownership and home mortgages, in that it generates obligations to non-familiar organizations that are linked to civic engagement and participation more broadly. Millenials are unique not only in lower rates of participation but in the accumulation of student debt (average student debt was $36,000 in 2017). This study tests whether Millennials with higher student debt have differential rates of political activity, including voting, donating to campaigns, working for campaigns, putting up political signs, discussing politics online and attending local meetings.

Using unique survey questions only found on the Cooperative Comparative Election Study (CCES) from 2014, 2016, and 2018 with approximately 50,000 respondents in each year, this study estimates the interaction effects of millennial generational status and debtor status as they pertain to participation in political activities. Results show young Americans with student debt participate at indistinguishable levels from older Americans, in the 2014 sample. Thus, debt erased the cohort difference in political participation. In 2016, young Americans with student debt participated in significantly more traditional political activities than older Americans and more than the youth without debt. For voting specifically, one of the most important political activities, debtor status increased a millennial's probability of voting by nearly 10%. The research contributes to our understanding of age cohorts, political economy and political behavior.

Author

• Courtney Juelich, University of Iowa