Education, Family Background, and Political Knowledge: A Test of the Compensation Hypothesis with Identical Twins
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321719848901 |
| Author | Darrel Robinson |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2019
Article
Political Studies
2020, Vol. 68(2) 350 –369
Education, Family Background,
© The Author(s) 2019
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and Political Knowledge: A
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Test of the Compensation
Hypothesis with Identical
Twins
Darrel Robinson
Abstract
Prior research has consistently identified education as an important correlate of political
knowledge, which, many argue, reflects an underlying causal relationship. However, recent
work has questioned this interpretation rather arguing that family background causes one to
both obtain an education and to develop political knowledge. I argue that this causal-versus-
proxy debate is too simplistic. Specifically, using a sample of identical twins, I test the interaction
between education, political discussion in the home, and political knowledge. I find that education
is positively associated with political knowledge independent of family background and genetics
for those who discussed politics with family relatively little during upbringing. However, for those
who discussed politics with family members more frequently, education has no association with
political knowledge independent of pre-adult factors. Therefore, education compensates for a lack
of exposure to political content in the home.
Keywords
education, political knowledge, political behavior, co-twin design, compensation hypothesis
Accepted: 15 April 2019
Introduction
Political knowledge is associated with a multitude of factors that are considered essential
for democratic politics. Knowledge is argued to lead to greater support for individual
rights (Bobo and Licari, 1989; Nie et al., 1996), greater political participation (Verba
et al., 1995), and political efficacy (Carpini and Keeter, 1996), and knowledge is assumed
to reflect a principle commitment to democratic rule (Nie et al., 1996). As Carpini and
Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Corresponding author:
Darrel Robinson, Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
Email: darrel.robinson@statsvet.uu.se
Robinson
351
Keeter (1996: 7) put it: “no other single characteristic of an individual affords so reliable
a predictor of good citizenship, broadly conceived.” Furthermore, political knowledge
increases the likelihood that one votes for candidates who espouse policy positions con-
sistent with one’s own (Fowler and Margolis, 2014; Singh and Roy, 2014). Therefore, not
only is knowledge assumed to lead to more participation, but it also leads to quality par-
ticipation aimed at effectively promoting the preferences of citizens. As democratic poli-
tics have become plagued by misinformation and fake news (Allcott and Gentzkow,
2017), understanding the factors that lead to political knowledge is of increasing
importance.
Prior studies have consistently identified education as an important correlate of politi-
cal knowledge (Carpini and Keeter, 1996; Nie et al., 1996; Rasmussen, 2016). Indeed,
Carpini and Keeter (1996: 188) summarize their extensive study of the determinants of
political knowledge as: “of all the individual demographic, structural, attitudinal, and
behavioral variables we examined … education was the strongest single predictor of
political knowledge.” However, the interpretation of this correlation is highly debated.
Some argue that education is causally prior because of its aim to develop the cognitive
capacity of students, and its influence on the social networks in which one engages both
during and after school (Verba et al., 1995; Carpini and Keeter, 1996; Nie et al., 1996;
Rasmussen, 2016). Therefore, raising the overall level of political knowledge in the popu-
lation can be achieved by increasing the overall level of education.
Others, on the other hand, argue that the correlation is spurious. Proponents of this
school of thought argue that pre-adult factors, such as genetics and family background,
are believed to influence both one’s level of education and one’s political knowledge
(Highton, 2009; Kam and Palmer, 2008; Luskin, 1990). A large literature has emerged,
which attempts to differentiate between the genetic, family, and environmental determi-
nants of political attitudes, and has found that a significant portion of the observed vari-
ance in political knowledge held by individuals is attributable to genetic factors alone
(Alford et al., 2005; Arceneaux et al., 2012; Dawes et al., 2014; Hatemi and McDermott,
2012). However, it is not entirely clear to what extent these pre-adult factors confound the
correlation between education and political knowledge as the literature has thus far been
somewhat divided. For example, Rasmussen (2016) finds a strong effect of education
after control for personality, intelligence, and parental factors. But Highton (2009) finds
no effect of college education on political knowledge with longitudinal data, and
Weinschenk and Dawes (2018)—using the same data analyzed in this article—find that
the relationship between education and political knowledge is highly confounded by pre-
adult factors.
Extant research has largely focused on this causal-versus-proxy debate (see Persson
(2015b) for an overview). This present study aims to further this literature by aiming to
uncover not if, but under which conditions, a causal effect is more likely. The particular
condition on which I focus, family background, is one of the most enduring explanatory
factors of political behavior and attitudes in the literature (Campbell, 1960). Individuals
are more likely to vote if their parents vote (Jennings and Niemi, 1981), they are likely to
support the same political party that their parents support (Hooghe and Boonen, 2015;
Westholm and Niemi, 1992), and they are more likely to be politically knowledgeable if
their parents have political knowledge (Jennings, 1996). In Jennings’ (1996) study of the
factors related to an individual’s political knowledge, the level of knowledge held by
one’s parents was the only consistently significant and substantial predictor—apart from
one’s own level of education. Furthermore, the degree to which parents transmit political
352
Political Studies 68(2)
attitudes varies as parents themselves vary in their political knowledge and engagement
(Hooghe and Boonen, 2015; Jennings and Niemi, 1981; Jennings et al., 2009; McIntosh
et al., 2007).
In this article, I focus on the interaction between a particular aspect of parental sociali-
zation, political discussion in the home,1 and education. Specifically, this study asks, does
political discussion in the home condition the effect of education on political knowledge?
Parental socialization as a conditioning factor has been examined in the civic education
(Campbell, 2008) and political participation literatures (Lindgren et al., 2018), but to the
best of my knowledge, it has not yet been linked to formal education and political knowl-
edge. In this study, political knowledge is defined as factual knowledge of the political
system and is measured as a summed index of five multiple-choice survey questions.
In order to answer this question, I implement a co-twin design in which I match identi-
cal twins to one another in order to estimate the effect of education with family fixed
effects (FFE). This setup allows me to control for pre-adult factors, such as genetics and
family background as they are assumed fixed within twin pairs. In this respect, the co-
twin design allows one to overcome many of the identification issues discussed in the
causal-versus-proxy debate, while allowing one to model differences between families in
order to study the effect of education conditional on family background. I analyze data
from the Minnesota Twin Political Survey (MTPS),2 a cross-section of identical twin
pairs collected in 2008/2009 (Nebraska-Lincoln, 2017). This article proceeds as follows:
I first review the literature and outline the conditional hypothesis. Following, I introduce
the data and research design. The subsequent analysis contributes to the field of political
knowledge by testing the interaction between education, parental socialization, and polit-
ical knowledge. In the final section of the article, I discuss the generalizability of the
findings through comparison to a nationally representative sample. I find that for indi-
viduals from homes in which politics were discussed comparatively little that education
has a positive association with political knowledge independent of pre-adult factors, but
that no such association is found among those who discussed politics relatively frequently.
Thus, while lacking a general effect independent of family background, education has the
capacity to compensate for low political socialization in the home.
The Interaction Between Education and Parental
Socialization
In a highly influential piece, Luskin (1987) argues that political knowledge comprises
three underlying dimensions: opportunity, motivation, and ability. Education takes a
prominent role in the discussion of the determinants of political knowledge because it is
assumed to impact upon all three dimensions, either directly or indirectly. The direct
impact of education arises as a result of its role in the cognitive development of students
(Verba et al., 1995); schooling develops one’s cognitive...
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