A five-year trend analysis of attitudes of female high school seniors toward post-high school work and education possibilities

A five year trend analysis of attitudes of female high school seniors toward post-high school work and education possibilities investigates what, if any, trends exist regarding education and work they would be doing at age 30. Correlations between females\u27 post-high school education and work goals and their parents attaining a college degree was studied. The relationship between daughters\u27 education and work goals and the mothers\u27 employment was researched; This study, while not showing a changing trend in the attitudes toward post-high school education, did define solidly the work and educational goals of female high school seniors during the period of 1985 through 1989

Magnetic fields from inflation: the transition to the radiation era

We compute the contribution to the scalar metric perturbations from large-scale magnetic fields which are generated during inflation. We show that apart from the usual passive and compensated modes, the magnetic fields also contribute to the constant mode from inflation. This is different from the causal (post inflationary) generation of magnetic fields where such a mode is absent and it might lead to significant, non-Gaussian CMB anisotropies.Comment: 19 pages, no figures. v2: Substantially revised version with different conclusions. v3: one reference added, matches version accepted for publication in PR

Macroeconomics, economic crisis and electoral outcomes: A national European pool

An abundance of comparative survey research argues the presence of economic voting as an individual force in European elections, thereby refuting a possible ecological fallacy. But the hypothesis of economic voting at the aggregate level, with macroeconomics influencing overall electoral outcomes, seems less sure. Indeed, there might be a micrological fallacy at work, with the supposed individual economic vote effect not adding up to a national electoral effect after all. Certainly that would account for the spotty evidence linking macroeconomics and national election outcomes. We examine the possibility of a micrological fallacy through rigorous analysis of a large time-series cross-sectional dataset of European nations. From these results, it becomes clear that the macroeconomy strongly moves national election outcomes, with hard times punishing governing parties, and good times rewarding them. Further, this economy-election connection appears asymmetric, altering under economic crisis. Indeed, we show that economic crisis, defined as negative growth, has much greater electoral effects than positive economic growth. Hard times clearly make governments more accountable to their electorates

The economic voter and economic crisis

Theories of economic voting have a long tradition in political science and continue to inspire a large group of scholars. Classical economic voting theory assumes a reward-and-punishment mechanism (Key, 1966). This mechanism implies that incumbents are more likely to stay in power under a good economy, but are cast out under a bad economy (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000). The economy has repeatedly been shown to be a major determinant of electoral behavior (see especially the recent book by Duch and Stevenson, 2008), but the current economic crisis seems to provide a marked illustration of how the economy affects voting. In recent elections across the Western industrialized world, most ruling coalitions lost their majority. Opposition parties, on the other hand, whether right wing or left wing, have appeared to benefit from the economic downturn

Left-wing parties in Western Europe gain votes when unemployment rises, but only when they are in opposition.

How does a rise in unemployment affect support for left-wing parties? As Ruth Dassonneville and Michael S. Lewis-Beck write, left-wing parties might be expected to gain support during periods of rising unemployment as they effectively ‘own’ the issue in the eyes of the electorate. However, this effect may be complicated when left-wing parties are in government, as incumbent parties tend to be blamed for a struggling economy. Outlining the results of a study on West European elections, they find that left-wing parties do seem to benefit from a rise in unemployment, but this effect decreases significantly depending on the extent to which they are involved in government

Economic Policy Voting and Incumbency: Unemployment in Western Europe

The economic voting literature has been dominated by the incumbency-oriented hypothesis, where voters reward or punish government at the ballot box according to economic performance. The alternative, policy-oriented hypothesis, where voters favor parties closest to their issue position, has been neglected in this literature. We explore policy voting with respect to an archetypal economic policy issue – unemployment. Voters who favor lower unemployment should tend to vote for left parties, since they “own” the issue. Examining a large time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) pool of Western European nations, we find some evidence for economic policy voting. However, it exists in a form conditioned by incumbency. According to varied tests, left incumbents actually experience a net electoral cost, if the unemployment rate climbs under their regime. Incumbency, then, serves to break any natural economic policy advantage that might accrue to the left due to the unemployment issue

Growth, Inequality, and Party Support: Valence and Positional Economic Voting

Economic growth helps governments get reelected. But does growth, as a valence issue, exhaust the possibilities for the economic vote? What about the impact of inequality, as as a positional economic issue? Can rising economic inequality make or break a government, independent of the country’s growth trajectory? We show, via an examination of 310 elections in established democracies, across time and space, that growth and inequality both matter for incumbent government support. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that both left-wing and right-wing incumbents are held accountable for changes in inequality. While these effects appear unaltered by structural factors such as federalism or the electoral system, their impact seems to depend, to some extent, on whether the country is going through economic hard times

Punishing Local Incumbents for the Local Economy

After decennia of research on economic voting, it is now established that the state of the economy affects voting behaviour. Nevertheless, this conclusion is the result of a focus on predominantly national-level economies and national-level elections. In this paper, we show that at a local level as well, mechanisms of accountability linked to the economy are at work. The local economic context affected voting behaviour in the 2012 Belgian municipal elections, with a stronger increase of unemployment rates in their municipality significantly decreasing the probability that voters choose an incumbent party. Additionally, we observe that voters are not opportunistically voting for incumbents who lower tax rates. Instead, voters seem to be holding local incumbents accountable for local economic conditions. We hence conclude that voters care about economic outcomes, not about what specific policies are implemented to reach these outcomes

The abiding voter : the lengthy horizon of retrospective evaluations

Although the theory of retrospective voting receives wide support in the literature on voting behavior, less agreement exists on voters’ time horizon when assessing the government’s performance – i.e., whether voters are myopic. Previous studies on voter myopia tend to focus on aggregate-level measures of the economy, or use an experimental approach. Using panel data, this paper offers the first investigation into voter myopia that uses individual-level evaluations of government performance in a representative survey at several points during the electoral cycle. Our study focuses on The Netherlands, but we also provide tests of the generalizability and robustness of our findings, and a replication in the U.S. context. The results indicate that voter satisfaction early in the government’s term adds to explaining incumbent voting. Thus, rather than the myopic voter, we find evidence of the abiding voter – steady at her or his post, evaluating government performance over a long length of time