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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: How Dramatically Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government? For decades we have known that women vote differently than men. In the presidential elections from 1980 to 1996 the gender gap—the difference between the way men voted and the way women did—was: 14 points in 1980, 16 in 1984, 15 in 1988, 5 in 1992, and 17 in 1996 (Langer, November 8, 1996). According to Voter News Service election day exit polls, if men alone could have voted in the 1996 presidential election, Robert Dole would have been elected president by carrying 31 states. We know that the differences between men and women extend to even such things as their sources of news, with women relying predominantly on television and men on newspapers and radio (Nando News July 30, 1996). Disciplines such as sociobiology emphasize why the different sexes develop distinct behavioral patterns consistent with maximizing their probability of successfully passing on their genes (Trivers, 1985, p. 20).2 While sociobiology discusses this theory across many species, a large psychology literature focuses more specifically on humans. This research finds that men are more likely to take career risks and more single-minded about acquiring resources,3 while “women are more inclined to be nurturing and orientated towards others with greater attachment towards their children and less willing to trade material resources for time spent with their children or in other activities” (Browne, 1995, p. 980 and see also Epstein, 1992, pp. 986-995). Many feminists argue that this different perspective arises, at least in part, from “their sexuality,” and provides a reason for including women in the political process (Gilligan, 1982, p. 129).4 Men can not be expected to see things the same way that women do. “[T]he disappointment of suffrage is recorded in the . . . tendency of [some women] in voting only to second their husbands’ opinions” (Gilligan, 1982, p. 129). To these women, it would be shocking to think that suffrage did not alter the outcomes of the political process. Yet, why these differences would affect the views of what role government should play is not completely clear. The first quote by Kristol raises some interesting possibilities. Maybe, as the sociobiologists and psychologist argue, women are more risk-averse than men, but why do women choose to use the government rather than other mechanisms to provide insurance? Many types of government programs are primarily wealth transfer programs rather than insurance programs in the normal sense. Marriage also provides another economic basis for men and women preferring different policies. It typically encourages men to accumulate market capital and leads women to acquire household skills and shoulder most of the child rearing responsibilities. While the gains from marital specialization and from efficient statistical discrimination in the labor market can be internalized through marriage, divorced women are unable to recoup the full compensation for their family-specific investments, and single working women lose from labor market discrimination (see Hunt and Rubin, 1980). Hence, single women as well as women who anticipate that they may become single may prefer a more progressive tax system and more wealth transfers to low-income people as alternative to a share of a husband’s uncertain future income. Others have noted that at least in some countries government jobs are filled primarily by women (e.g., see Rosen, 1996, discussing Sweden). Today women make up 54.8 percent of the U.S. Federal government white collar workers. Thus, women may feel that they have more at stake the government remaining the same or growing (Stark, 1996, p. 78). Possibly, it is even more specific. Men and women may support those government activities where they are more heavily employed (e.g., defense and education, respectively). One long standing puzzle facing public choice has been why government growth started when it did (Tullock, 1995). In the United States, many have noted the general problem: “There was tremendous expansion of government growth in the 1930’s, to be sure, but that expansion is better seen as a continuation of the expansion of the scope of government in the 1920’s” (Holcombe, 1997, p. 26). The literature is littered with theories from the unbalanced growth hypothesis (Baumol, 1967), ratcheting effects (Peacock and Wiseman, 1961), revenue maximizing bureaucrats (Niskanen, 1971), reductions in the costs of collecting taxes (Kau and Rubin, 1981), entrepreneurial politicians (Becker, 1985 and Lott, 1990 and 1997), the development of interest groups (Holcombe, 1997), and the notion that government is a superior good (Wagner’s Law).7 All these theories face one significant problem: government has not always been growing. Previous general discussions involving the extensions of the voting franchise (e.g., Meltzer and Richard, 1978, 1981, and 1983) also have problems explaining the timing of growth. Indeed in the United States, with the exceptions of wars, real per capita Federal Government expenditures remained remarkably constant until the 1920’s. In fact, as has been widely noted by public choice scholars, World War I was the first war after which per capita government expenditures did not return back to their pre-war levels and by the end of the 1920’s the growth trend that we are so familiar with today had begun.8 To explain this timing, some point to the effect that the seemingly successful economy wide regulations during the war had on people’s beliefs about the role of government (Higgs, 1987). We propose that giving women the right to vote changed the size of government. We examine several indcators of the size and scope of government, from state government expenditures and revenues to voting index scores for Federal House and Senate members from 1870 to 1940. Twenty-nine states gave women the right to vote before the 19th amendment to the Constitution was approved in 1920, with seven of the remaining nineteen approving the amendment and twelve having women’s suffrage imposed on them. Women obtained the right to vote in four states even prior to the turn of the century, in eight states between 1910 and 1914, and in 17 states in 1917-19. By 1940, the end of our sample, women had been voting in 12 states for at least 26 years and in 4 states for at least 44 years. Although a number of women took advantage of their new right to vote immediately, it took several decades for turnout to fully adjust. We find the growth in female voter turnout to be positive associated with the expansion of government. Since suffrage was granted to women in different states over a long period of time extending from 1869 to 1920, it is unlikely that World War I is the key. These data also allow us to address causality questions in unusual ways. The central issue is: did giving women the right to vote cause government to grow or was there something else which both contributed to women getting the right to vote and also increased government growth? We find very similar effects of women’s suffrage in states that voted for suffrage and states that were forced to give women the right to vote, which suggests the second effect is small. The remaining empirical analysis utilizes more recent polling data to help explain why women and men vote so differently. We find that there is a greater gender gap for single mothers, and that women—particularly single women—are more likely to be liberal and a Democrat and to have voted for the Democrat presidential candidate. (End of First Chapter) Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
#2. To: Googolplex (#0)
Yeah, but why were they given that? One reason: Because black men could vote -- and surely a white woman is higher on the food chain than that. And maybe the men became pussies; nowhere to go but down from the summit, having dominated the world for four centuries. And I'm sure all the yenta immigrants wanted a vote. Immigration, too, was a spur all on its own to government growth, to manage the new diversity. Also the closing of the frontier; it became harder for people who didn't like their neighbors or the mayor to find a new place to live. Nice read and nice to see you.
Women should not be allowed to vote.
I agree. You should not be able to vote.
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