Civic Education in High School and Voter Turnout in Adulthood

Abstract This article examines the effect of high school civic education on voter turnout in adulthood by integrating extensive academic transcript data social studies and coursework into a large-scale, longitudinal survey nationally representative sample adolescents. In an initial series regression models, civics courses appear to have adulthood. However, after accounting for individual family attributes, has fairly limited turnout, though several measures statistically significant effects even presence controls. Interestingly, study finds no support idea that focus service learning, skills development or political issues increase adulthood, which is contrary expectations from resource model participation. After subjecting persist controls additional scrutiny using fixed-effects models account all observed unobserved influences shared siblings same (for example, socialization, predispositions, etc.), evidence suggests there null relationship between turnout; best-case scenario any do exist are likely very small. The training will help substantially elevate appears be overly optimistic.