My research looks at the relationship between parent nativity and an individual’s likelihood of voting. Using Campbell’s socialization theory (2006) and Putnam’s research (2000) on ties to one’s community, I argue that individuals with native-born parents are more likely to vote and participate politically. I posed this research question because we can learn a lot about civic and political behavior from where one is from. This means that foreign-born parents’ engagement will differ depending on where they are from, and these norms may be passed on to the child through socialization. This knowledge is important because it can tell politicians which groups of people (for example, Asian immigrants) are more likely or less likely to participate, and therefore they know which groups to campaign to.
My first figure displays a graph showing a comparison over time, from 1950 to 2016, of the likelihood of voting by parent nativity. The 2016 results show a negative correlation between having foreign-born parents and voting, whereas in 1950 there was a positive correlation between having foreign-born parents and voting. Through my research I found that one possible explanation for this outcome is that the origin of immigrants in the mid 1900s and the origin of immigrants in the 2000s were drastically different.
My next figure is a coefficient plot of the results of a logit regression depicting the relationship between having a native-born parent and partisanship. From these regressions we can conclude that there is a positive correlation between having native-born parents and being a Republican, and also a positive correlation between having foreign-born parents and being a Democratic.