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To: RobertClark
How Dramatically Did Women's Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?

JOHN R. LOTT Jr.
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (download links for whole document at bottom of page)

September 1998

University of Chicago Law School, John M. Olin Law & Economics Working Paper No. 60
Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, Number 6, Part 1, pp. 1163-1198, December 1999

Abstract:
This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.


4 posted on 10/14/2012 11:04:41 AM PDT by familyop ("Wanna cigarette? You're never too young to start." --Deacon, "Waterworld")
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To: familyop
I read this paper years ago and tried to disseminate its import, to no avail. The logic of the author's surmise is stark and cold blooded; suffrage just might well be the death knell of any civilization.

Ann Coulter herself remarked on the ineluctable conclusion that for a country to remain strong, viable and well defended, it needs the harsh and self serving interests of conservative men to rule the day. Socialism, and its many variations, is the providence of women and those who seek the succor of women (or who want to be womanlike.)

I endorse this view only to a point. I believe that suffrage must be the final option of any civilization or empire so as to implode and make way for the next great idea in governance.

6 posted on 10/14/2012 12:09:10 PM PDT by Thommas (The snout of the camel is in the tent..)
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