VOTES FOR WOMEN (Public Choice)

In the United States, Wyoming and Utah were the first states to grant women the right to vote, in 1869 and 1870, respectively. They were followed over two decades later by Colorado in 1893 and Idaho in 1896. The list of states approving female suffrage then grew steadily from 1910 to 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expanding the voting franchise to women was ratified.

It took many more years for female suffrage to spread around the world. Finland granted women the right to vote in 1906 and was followed over the next quarter century by many European countries. It was not until 1929 that the first Latin American and Asian countries — Ecuador and India — allowed women to vote. Expansion of women’s suffrage continued across these continents through the late 1950s. Moslem countries were among the last to grant women the right to vote, many doing so between 1949 and 1963. In 1971, Switzerland became the last major developed country to allow women to vote.

There are several interesting questions involving women’s suffrage that have been addressed in public choice research. What factors played a role in determining support for women’s suffrage and its early adoption? How long did it take for women to fully respond to their new voting privilege? What impact did the resulting shift in the composition of voters have on government policies?

There has been very little research on the sources of political support for women’s suffrage. Jones (1991) explains voting behavior in the U.S. House and Senate on a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, and Kenny (2002) studies the timing of U.S. states approving women’s suffrage provisions. Not surprisingly, Jones finds that legislators from states that had granted women the right to vote supported amending the U.S. Constitution to expand the voting franchise to women across the country.


More fundamentally, support for women’s suffrage depended on the ratio of women to men and on the fraction of women who were married. Granting women the right to vote was less costly to men in states where there were fewer women and thus a smaller change in the equilibrium due to suffrage. The scarcity of women in frontier states should have given women a greater share of marital income (Becker, 1981), and thus more privileges. Furthermore, having women’s suffrage may have helped states with few women attract more women, which would be valued by single males in these states. Consistent with this reasoning, legislators from states with relatively few women were more likely to support the 19th Amendment (Jones, 1991), and states with few women granted women the right to vote earlier (Kenny, 2002). Similarly, granting women the right to vote should have had a smaller impact on political outcomes in states in which more women were married, and thus internalizing in their marriage the gains from marital specialization and from efficient statistical discrimination in the labor market (Hunt and Rubin, 1980). As predicted, Kenny finds that states with a larger fraction of women married adopted women’s suffrage sooner.

The greater difficulty that women in rural states faced in organizing a successful grass roots movement hampered their success in obtaining the right to vote. Kenny’s finding that the adoption of women’s suffrage occurred later in more rural states is consistent with Stigler’s (1971) evidence that occupations obtained licensure later in less urbanized states.

How long did it take for women to fully utilize their newly obtained voting privilege? For many individuals, the various benefits from voting appear to barely cover the cost of voting. But some political capital is needed to be able to select the candidate or policy that is best for a citizen. Lott and Kenny (1999) argue that the acquisition of this political capital, and the voter participation that it facilitates, is unlikely to be profitable for an older person who has just been given the right to vote but should be beneficial for a newly enfranchised 25 year old. As time passes, older cohorts of women who did not take advantage of their new right to vote are replaced by young cohorts of women who, with a lifetime of voting ahead of them, find it worthwhile to vote. This process of cohort replacement thus results in higher voter turnout. There is, however, very little evidence on how long it takes for voter turnout to fully respond to a major change in the voting franchise.

Lott and Kenny estimate the impact of giving women the right to vote on voter turnout in gubernatorial races in 1870-1940. Approximately half the ultimate increase in turnout occurs immediately. As time passes since women obtained the voting franchise, turnout continues to rise but at a decreasing rate. Under a spline specification, after nine years have passed the rate of increase in turnout as time passes falls to one third the initial rate of increase. Under a quadratic specification, turnout is estimated to increase until 54 years have passed since women were granted the right to vote. Both results suggest that it takes a very long time for the full effects of granting women the right to vote to be observed.

Other evidence is consistent with it taking a generation before turnout fully responds to a sharp rise in the incentive to vote, due to the repeal of a poll tax. Filer et al. (1991) find that the poll tax, which was repealed in 1964 by the 24th Amendment, was still depressing turnout 16 years later. Lott and Kenny (1999) estimate that it took at least 20 years for voter turnout to fully recover after the poll tax was removed.

Adding women to the ranks of voters is hypothesized to have resulted in higher government spending. Divorced women often have been unable to obtain full compensation for their family-specific investments through alimony. And programs that favor the poor are more valued by women, who tend to have lower incomes than men. Thus women who are single or concerned about becoming single may prefer government programs that transfer resources to the poor over uncertain alimony payments. Lott and Kenny (1999) use the estimated growth in turnout due to granting women the right to vote, which was described above, to measure the growing importance of women in the ranks of those who vote. Allowing women to vote is estimated to have raised state spending by 14 percent immediately, by 21 percent after 25 years, and by 28 percent after 45 years. The growth in spending that is attributed to women’s suffrage accounts for approximately 16 percent of the 88 percent growth in real per capita state spending between 1913 and 1922. Lott and Kenny’s other finding that state congressional delegations became more liberal after women were allowed to vote also is consistent with suffrage leading to greater government spending.

Women in Switzerland obtained the right to vote in 1971, at least 25 years after women in neighboring France, Germany, and Italy had started to vote. Abrams and Settle (1999) take advantage of this natural experiment to estimate the impact on government spending of women participating in elections. Enfranchising women is hypothesised to result in a new decisive voter who is poorer. According to Meltzer and Richard’s (1981) model, this should lead to a rise in pure redistributive government spending. Abrams and Settle provide support for this prediction. They find that social welfare spending rose 28 percent. Husted and Kenny (1997) show that spending on government services falls if the income effect associated with the new decisive voter being poorer is greater than the substitution effect due to this voter facing a lower price for government services. Abrams and Settle find that government spending on final goods and services fell by 6 percent as a result of women being granted the right to vote, which is consistent with the empirical generalisation that the income elasticity for government services typically exceeds the price elasticity (Husted and Kenny, 1997, p. 55).

There also is some evidence that the legal and regulatory structure became more favorable to women after they were given the right to vote. Lott and Kenny (1999) report that states that had approved women’s suffrage laws were more likely to pass legislation that restricted alimony to women and allowed alimony to be granted permanently. Women played a dominant role in the temperance movement. Lott and Kenny find that states were more likely to pass state laws banning the consumption of alcohol once women started voting. Similarly, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishing Prohibition received more support in state houses and senates in states that had given women the right to vote (Munger and Schaller,1997).

To summarize, states with relatively few women and in which most women were married were among the first to grant women the right to vote. It took several decades for turnout to fully respond to this expansion of the voting franchise. As women began to vote and then turned out in greater numbers, state congressional delegations became more liberal, state spending increased, and state divorce laws became more favorable to women. State legislatures also responded to the influence of female voters by outlawing the consumption of alcohol in the state and supporting a constitutional ban on alcohol for the nation.

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