Do the Rich Run for Office? Evidence from Candidates' Housing Wealth

• In Event: Why are Politicians so Rich?

Abstract

How economically unrepresentative are elected officials in the United States of the populations they represent? I link candidates for state and local offices in California from 1996-2018 to their publicly available housing records and find that candidates for virtually all elected positions live in homes with higher values than the median home in their constituency, on average. Linking both winning and losing candidates to their housing wealth, I find that elections advantage candidates with higher housing wealth. Finally, I leverage changes from at-large to district-level elections for city council and school board positions to estimate the effect of different methods of electoral selection on these wealth disparities. I find that switching from at-large to district-based elections lessens wealth disparities between elected officials and their constituents.

Author

• Jesse Yoder, Stanford University