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Parental unemployment and young people's extreme right‐wing party affinity: evidence from panel data
Author(s) -
Siedler Thomas
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-985x.2010.00683.x
Subject(s) - unemployment , sibling , german , demographic economics , panel data , economics , right wing , psychology , developmental psychology , political science , econometrics , economic growth , geography , politics , archaeology , law
Summary. The paper investigates the extent to which parental unemployment affects young people's far right‐wing party affinity. Cross‐sectional estimates from the German Socio‐Economic Panel show a positive relationship between growing up with unemployed parents and support for the extreme right. The paper uses differences in parental unemployment experience during childhood across siblings to investigate a causal relationship. Sibling differences estimates suggest that young people who experience parental unemployment have a significantly higher chance of supporting extreme right‐wing parties in Germany. The results show that the effect is particularly strong among East Germans, and stronger among sons than daughters. Moreover, the estimates point to a strong and positive effect of growing up in a single‐parent family on young people's far right‐wing party affinity, whereas household income appears to be an insignificant predictor.