Youth Suffrage and Legislative Responsiveness to Climate Change: Evidence from Scotland

Although the vast majority of countries around the world require that voters be 18 years of age to cast a ballot, advocates of extending the franchise to include individuals aged 16 and over point to greater engagement and countries that have lowered the voting age to 16 have witnessed increased political participation compared to some older groups. While a handful of studies have looked at the effects of lowering the voting age to 16 on political knowledge or participation, we have almost no understanding of how youth enfranchisement influences legislative behavior. In this article, we adopt a difference-in-differences design to examine the effects of lowering the minimum voting age in Scotland in 2015. By comparing the legislative speeches of representatives in the Scottish Parliament (who are elected by Scots 16+) to Scottish representatives in Westminster (who are elected by Scots 18+) from 2010 to 2020, we estimate the degree to which lowering the minimum voting age increased legislative responsiveness to an issue consistently prioritized by younger voters -- climate change. The results indicate that lowering the voting age caused an ~18 percent increase in responsiveness to climate change in the Scottish Parliament.