A week ago I posted on the gender gap in politics; today Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science critiques a similar argument:
Via Craig Newmark, I saw a column by John Lott summarizing his 1999 paper with Lawrence Kenny, “Did women’s suffrage change the size and scope of government?” Lott and Kenny conclude Yes, by comparing the spending and revenue patterns of state governments before and after women were allowed to vote. I haven’t looked at the analysis carefully and would need a little more convincing that it’s not just a story of coinciding time trends (they have a little bit of leverage because women were given the vote sooner in some states than others), but the story is plausible, at least from the perspective of voting patterns nowadays.
On the other hand . . .
poll data appear to show that the gender gap in voting between men and women is relatively recent–if anything, women used to vote more Republican than men did–so it’s not clear if the effect Lott seems to be finding is occurring from women actually voting for conservative candidates or from some indirect effect of legislators trying to adapt to what they perceive as the preferences of women.
History is good for you. Really. It increases the sample space from which you can select data. You want to test your hypotheses on different populations, but let’s include the dimension of time as well as space.
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