Turgut Keskintürk
Sociological Science September 27, 2024
10.15195/v11.a33
Abstract
Do life-course transitions in adulthood shape political orientations? One framework suggests that life events expose people to new information, allowing actors to assess their political beliefs and preferences in response to these social experiences. An alternative framework suggests that the link between one’s life-course position and personal politics may be ambiguous, and early experiences should be more informative for political orientations. In this article, I use four household surveys across three countries and 40 items on political beliefs and preferences to test whether lifecourse transitions change one’s political orientations. In doing this, I employ difference-in-differences models to identify the effects of six life transitions across family and work domains on a wide variety of propositional survey items. I find that life-course transitions have no substantive influence on political orientations, and the general findings are not sensitive to differences in political interest or the age at which individuals experience these life events.
Do life-course transitions in adulthood shape political orientations? One framework suggests that life events expose people to new information, allowing actors to assess their political beliefs and preferences in response to these social experiences. An alternative framework suggests that the link between one’s life-course position and personal politics may be ambiguous, and early experiences should be more informative for political orientations. In this article, I use four household surveys across three countries and 40 items on political beliefs and preferences to test whether lifecourse transitions change one’s political orientations. In doing this, I employ difference-in-differences models to identify the effects of six life transitions across family and work domains on a wide variety of propositional survey items. I find that life-course transitions have no substantive influence on political orientations, and the general findings are not sensitive to differences in political interest or the age at which individuals experience these life events.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. |
Reproducibility Package: The code to reproduce the full set of analyses and instructions on how to access the household surveys are provided at https://osf.io/hu3yj/.
- Citation: Keskintürk, Turgut 2024. “Life-Course Transitions and Political Orientations” Sociological Science 11: 907-933.
- Received: July 3, 2024
- Accepted: September 10, 2024
- Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
- DOI: 10.15195/v11.a33
Email: lewis@usd.edu