The Long-Lasting Effects of Civic Education? A Quasi-Experimental Approach

Despite practitioners agreeing about the relevance of civic education, findings about its actual effects are mixed. Moreover, most research has focused on the short-term impact of civic education in the US, and, with some notable exceptions, experimental and quasi-experimental evidence about its effects is limited. In this paper we exploit the discontinuities generated by changes in Spanish education policies to identify the effects of civic education on set of “civic” attitudes and behaviors like the duty to vote, political participation, or political interest. In 2008 a new subject on civic education was introduced in the school curricula, this subject was later removed in 2016. These changes gave rise to exogenous variation in exposure to civic education between young individuals born in different years. We exploit these discontinuities through multiple RDDs that draw on a combination of a 10-wave panel survey (2010-2018) and cross-sectional surveys that oversample young citizens. The use of panel data, in combination with a RDD, allows us to explore the potential decay of the effects of civic education as people age.