Migration and Skewed Subnational Sex Ratios among Young Adults
Population and Development Review, 2023
Skewed sex ratios have been found to increase crime and spread of diseases, as well as influence fertility decisions, gender roles, and economic development. I document the extent to which international and internal migration shape national and subnational sex ratios among young adults (SRYA). For this purpose, I analyze the data from the United Nations’ Urban and Rural Population by Age and Sex and World Population Prospects, focusing on the cohort born between 1975 and 1985 in 200 countries. I find that, while 33 countries have significantly skewed country-level sex ratios, as many as 107 of the 200 investigated countries have either rural or urban skewed SRYA in 2010. To identify the sources of sex ratio imbalances, I decompose country-level sex ratios into three factors: sex ratio at birth, relative probability of survival, and sex-selective migration. I show that without sex-selective international migration, country-level SRYA would be balanced in almost all countries of the world. In the third part of the study, I use Eurostat data for European subnational regions. I find a strong log-linear relationship between sex ratios and population density, that is, relatively more women among young adults as population density increases. Moreover, I show that skewed SRYA can be mainly attributable to sex-selective migration, rather than to imbalanced sex ratios at birth and differential mortality.
Wasting public money to buy turnout: quasi-experimental evidence from the Polish battle for fire trucks
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 2024, with Mikołaj Cześnik
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It is well known that incumbents enjoy advantages in elections. Among others, they may use public resources to increase their electoral chances by mobilizing specific social groups to vote. In the 2020 presidential elections, the Polish government organised a competition: small municipalities with the highest turnout could win a fire truck. We exploit the threshold of 20,000 that arbitrarily divided municipalities into competing and non-competing for this public good and apply the quasi-experimental Regression Discontinuity Design. The competition aimed to increase the turnout in districts supporting the incumbent president. However, we find no evidence of any significant impact of the competition on the turnout or support for the incumbent around the threshold. We discuss why similar practices are common despite this result.