The challenge
Women's choices appear to emphasise child welfare more than men's, but until state suffrage laws were passed, women could not vote and politicians had no electoral reason to respond to them.
The case
Twenty-nine US states extended the right to vote to women before the Nineteenth Amendment was approved in 1920; early successes included the territories of Wyoming in 1869 and Utah in 1870. Grant Miller related the sharp timing of state women's suffrage laws enacted between 1869 and 1920 to trend breaks in legislators' voting, public spending and mortality. Suffrage laws were followed by immediate shifts in legislative behaviour and large, sudden increases in local public health spending: women's suffrage was associated with an 8% increase in total municipal spending, a 6% increase in spending on health conservation and sanitation and a 36% increase in spending on charities, hospitals and corrections. This spending fuelled large-scale door-to-door hygiene campaigns, and child mortality declined by 8–15%, or 20,000 annual child deaths nationwide, with reductions occurring only among infectious childhood killers sensitive to hygienic conditions.
Why it worked
Miller argues the findings are consistent with standard models of electoral competition: once women could vote, politicians responded to their preferences, which appear to emphasise child welfare more than men's.
Sources
- Miller, G. (2008). Women's suffrage, political responsiveness, and child survival in American history. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(3), 1287–1327.
- Miller, G. Women's suffrage, political responsiveness, and child survival in American history (author manuscript, PubMed Central).
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