Does cohort size matter? Assessing the effect of youth cohort size and peer influence on young people's electoral participation

Do the relative numbers of young people in the adult population affect their extent of participation in electoral politics? The answer to this question remains elusive in both the theoretical and empirical literature on youth political participation. In this study, we test the hypothesis that young...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of youth studies Vol. 26; no. 7; pp. 859 - 877
Main Authors Nkansah, Godfred Bonnah, Papp, Zsófia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 09.08.2023
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Peer influence
Political behavior
Political participation
voting
Youth
youth bulge
Youth cohort size
youth political participation
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Summary:Do the relative numbers of young people in the adult population affect their extent of participation in electoral politics? The answer to this question remains elusive in both the theoretical and empirical literature on youth political participation. In this study, we test the hypothesis that young people's cohort size has a significant effect on their electoral participation. Using individual level data from the World Values Survey and country level data from the United Nations Population Division, we ran a series of multinomial logistic regression analyses with 29 democratic countries. The findings show that youth cohort size exerts a negative effect on young people's electoral participation. The study finds this effect to be stronger for young people whose main source of information are their peers. The results of this study represent a major step towards improving our understanding of the effect of cohort size on cohort political behaviour; a topic so far neglected within the literature on youth political participation.
ISSN:1367-6261
1469-9680
DOI:10.1080/13676261.2022.2053666