What women can do to you, politics edition
Oswald and Powdthavee present very convincing evidence that they can turn you into a left-winger - and that's before they even grow old enough to utter a word. Using data from a rich longitudinal dataset, the British Household Panel Survey, they find that every extra daughter raises a parent's probability of voting Left by 2 percentage points.
The authors also have a go at explaining why:
[...] Because of wage discrimination and different female preferences over public goods (females derive greater utility from public goods like community safety), rational parents tilt to the left if they have daughters. A male voter who has a daughter becomes subconsciously sympathetic to the ‘female’ preference for the policies advocated by left-wing parties. This conceptual framework gives correct predictions; whether it is in fact the right explanation for the patterns in the data seems an important topic for continued research.
Part of the explanation given is that "females derive greater utility from public goods like community safety". However, traditionally in the UK arguably it is the right wing party who have (until recently) had more of a reputation with tackling crime (going back to Robert Peel in the mid-1800s). This makes this aspect of the explanation unconvincing.