Revisiting the causal effect of education on political participation and interest

Many studies suggest a relationship between education and political participation, but only some address causality. We add to this by re-examining the German case. For identification, we exploit an exogenous increase in compulsory schooling, use data from National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). The enable analyses that do not rely solely on conversion of school-leaving qualifications into schooling duration individuals’ actual length as part their educational biographies. Our results indicate well-known association participation partially reflects causal effects.