The effect of educational attainment on political attitudes and behaviour

个人的教育水平在解释其政治态度和行为方面越来越重要：在2017年英国大选中，教育水平与选民偏好的关系比社会阶层等传统分裂更强（Jennings and Stoker, 2017; Ford and Goodwin, 2018）。在这方面，英国并不孤单：在美国、法国、意大利、瑞典和德国最近的选举中，以及2016年欧盟成员国公投中，都发现了类似的关系（Inglehart和Norris， 2016）。但是，为什么教育应该对政治态度产生这种影响——以及为什么这种关系最近随着这些国家大规模参与高等教育的出现而加剧——还没有得到很好的理解。实证研究试图从经验上建立教育与政治态度之间关系的因果机制，只有极少数人利用纵向数据来控制父母和童年特征（Surridge, 2016）。因此，这种关系，除了群众参与的总体影响之外，鉴于其重要性，仍未得到充分探讨。因此，拟议的研究将主要通过对esrc资助的三个不同世代的纵向数据进行回归分析，审查教育程度与政治态度之间的关系，力求解决以下五个问题：受教育程度对政治参与、政党和政策偏好的影响是什么？教育程度对前人和后人政治态度的影响是什么？学科选择、学校特色和教育程度对16岁后政治兴趣的影响是什么？教育程度对以后生活中的政治态度和政策偏好有什么影响？在威斯敏斯特议会选区内，大众参与高等教育的总体效果是什么，超出了基于人口特征的预期？这项研究将通过系统地研究教育、政治态度和政策偏好之间的关系在面对高等教育的重大变化时是如何演变的，来回答有关新出现的教育政治分裂的问题。这将使我们能够更好地理解群体效应、个人中学和16岁以后经历的重要性，以及教育对更广泛接受的“商品”（如政治参与）的不同影响。因此，它有可能为有关学科选择和16岁后入学机会的政策反应提供信息，扩大高等教育的参与，并有可能改变其他培训途径（如学徒制），从而为同伴社交提供更大的空间。

An individual's level of education is increasingly significant in explaining their political attitudes and behaviour: at the 2017 General Election in the UK, education demonstrated a stronger relationship with voter preferences than traditional cleavages such as social class (Jennings and Stoker, 2017; Ford and Goodwin, 2018). The UK is not alone in this: a similar relationship has been found in recent elections in the United States, France, Italy, Sweden and Germany, and in the 2016 referendum on EU membership (Inglehart and Norris, 2016).But why education should have this effect on political attitudes - and why this relationship has intensified recently, alongside the advent of mass participation in Higher Education in these countries - is not well understood. Empirical studies have sought to establish the causal mechanism for the relationship between education and political attitudes empirically, and only very few have done so making use of longitudinal data to control for parental and childhood characteristics (Surridge, 2016). As a result, this relationship, in addition to the aggregate effect of mass participation, remains under-explored given its significance. The proposed study will therefore examine the relationship between educational attainment and political attitudes, primarily through regression analysis of ESRC-funded longitudinal data on three different generations, seeking to address the following five questions:1. What is the effect of educational attainment on political participation, party and policy preferences, controlling for pre-adult characteristics?2. What is the effect of educational attainment on political attitudes in earlier and later generations?3. What is the effect of subject choice, school characteristics and educational attainment post-16 on political interest?4. What is the effect of educational attainment on political attitudes and policy preferences in later life?5. What is the aggregate effect of mass participation in Higher Education within a Westminster Parliamentary constituency, over and above what would be expected based on population characteristics?The study will speak to questions about emerging educational political cleavages by examining systematically how the relationship between education, political attitudes and policy preferences has evolved in the face of major changes in Higher Education. This would enable a greater understanding of cohort effects, the significance of an individual's secondary school and post-16 experience, and the varying influence of education on more widely accepted 'goods' such as political participation. As a result, it has the potential to inform policy responses on subject choice and access post-16, widening participation in HE, and the potential for changes to other training routes (eg apprenticeships) to enable greater scope for peer socialisation.