An Alternative Measure of Relative Education to Explain Voter Turnout

Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry (1996) develop a theory in which relative, rather than absolute education determines political participation. Empirical tests of this theory have been unable to isolate the effect of education from other factors that impact participation. We propose an alternative definition in which education is measured relative to those born in the same year. This is used to estimate a model of voter turnout that controls for both absolute and relative education. The results show that this new measure of relative education has far more explanatory power than does absolute education. This finding has significant implications regarding how education affects both aggregate voter turnout levels and inequality in voter participation.