Can we teach civic attitudes?

Resumo

There is a large amount of evidence that shows that higher levels of schooling are associated with a substantive increase in civic engagement. We empirically discuss this issue using Spanish data. In order to identify the existence of a possible causal link between schooling and civic attitudes, we use the discontinuity between compulsory schooling and minimum working age introduced in the 1976 law of employment regulation. We find that education has no significant effect on citizenship outcomes for those individuals who are indifferent between working or continue in school in the absence of the child labor law change, i.e. those identified by the instumental variable approach. However, family traits do have substantial effect on citizenship outcomes.