The Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) Nuffield - FLAME University is pleased to host Dr. James Lo, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California. Dr. Lo will be giving a talk titled "Abortion and Turnout".

Abstract

The introduction of legalized abortion in the 1970s in the U.S. had a significant impact on subsequent cohort outcomes, resulting in a significant reduction in fertility rates and inducing sizable positive selection along a wide range of socio-economic outcomes. These same socio-economic outcomes are known to robustly correlate with measures of political participation, which suggests that abortion may also select cohorts that are more likely to engage with politics. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the introduction of legalized abortion produces similar selection effects on turnout. Our estimates suggest that legalized abortion increased turnout rates among affected cohorts by 1.4 to 3.8 percentage points.

Bio

James Lo is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California (USC).  His research focuses on the development of new quantitative tools to help political scientists answer substantive questions, and much of his work focuses on techniques designed to measure the ideology of voters and legislators. Before joining USC, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim and Princeton University.