Pension Generosity and Political Participation

• In Event: Poster Session: Predicting Political Participation

Abstract

The elderly now represent one of the largest electoral groups in many democracies, while pensions often constitute the most expensive benefit program in advanced welfare states. While policymakers often associate changes in pension systems with large electoral consequences, we still lack causal evidence on the effect of pension benefits on political behaviour. To fill this gap, we match administrative individual-level pension payment data with voter file records of public employees in Illinois to exploit the timing of benefit-expanding reforms in the late 1990s. Employing regression discontinuity designs and difference-in-differences approaches in the context of three benefit-expanding reforms, we find that pension benefits do not have a mobilizing effect on eligible voters, neither in the short- nor in the long-run. Interestingly, we also do not find an effect along partisan lines or income levels. Our empirical results are robust to a series of placebo test, robustness checks, and sensitivity analyses. Overall, our findings suggest that pension-related policy feedbacks are, contrary to conventional wisdom, rather limited, and resource effects seem to diminish during retirement.

Authors

• Michael Ganslmeier

• Margaryta Klymak, King's College London

• Tim Vlandas, University of Oxford