Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T10:35:07.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate- versus Individual-level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Gerald H. Kramer
Gerald H. Kramer*
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Several aggregate-level studies have found a relationship between macroeconomic conditions and election outcomes, operating in intuitively plausible directions. More recent survey-based studies, however, have been unable to detect any comparable relationship operating at the individual-voter level. This persistent discrepancy is puzzling. One recently proposed explanation for it is that voters actually behave in an altruistic or “sociotropic” fashion, responding to economic events only as they affect the general welfare, rather than in terms of self-interested “pocketbook” considerations.

It is argued here that the discrepancies between the macro- and microlevel studies are a statistical artifact, arising from the fact that observable changes in individual welfare actually consist of two unobservable components, a government-induced (and politically relevant) component, and an exogenous component caused by life-cycle and other politically irrelevant factors. Because of this, individual level cross-sectional estimates of the effects of welfare changes on voting are badly biased and are essentially unrelated to the true values of the behavioral parameters of interest: they will generally be considerable underestimates and may even be of the wrong sign. An aggregate-level time-series analysis, on the other hand, will often yield reasonably good (if somewhat attenuated) estimates of the underlying individual-level effects of interest. Therefore, in this case, individual behavior is best investigated with aggregate- rather than individual-level data.

It is also shown that the evidence for sociotropic voting is artifactual, in the sense that the various findings and evidence which ostensibly show sociotropic behavior are all perfectly compatible with the null hypothesis of self-interested, pocketbook voting.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 92 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arcelus, F., and Meltzer, A. H. 1975. The effect of aggregate economic variables on congressional elections. American Political Science Review 69: 1232–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, H. S., and Price, H. D. 1975. Voter responseto short-run economic conditions. American PoliticalScience Review 69: 1240–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fair, R. C. 1976. A model of macroeconomic activity, volume II. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger.Google Scholar
Fair, R. C. 1978. The effects of economic events on votesfor president. Review of Economics and Statistics 60: 159–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, M. P. 1978. Economic retrospective voting in American national elections: a micro-analysis. American Journal of Political Science 22: 426–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, S., and Kramer, G. H. 1975. Comment on Arcelus and Meltzer: the effect of aggregate economicconditions on congressional elections. AmericanPolitical Science Review 69: 1255–65.Google Scholar
Grunfeld, Y., and Griliches, Z. 1960. Is aggregationnecessarily bad? Review of Economics and Statistics 42: 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson, G., and Kernell, S. 1982. The structure of choice: a theory of congressional elections. NewHaven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kiewiet, D. R. 1981. Macroeconomics and micropolitics. unpublished manuscript. California Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Kinder, D. R., and Kiewiet, D. R. 1979a. Sociotropicpolitics: the American case. British Journal ofPolitical Science 11: 129–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinder, D. R., and Kiewiet, D. R. 1979b. Economic discontent and political behavior: the role of personal grievances and collective economic judgments in congressional voting. American Journal of Political Science 23: 495–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohen, A. I., and Parnes, H. S. 1975. Income instabilityamong young and middle-aged men. In The personal distribution of income and wealth, ed. Smith, J. D.. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Kramer, G. H. 1971. Short-term fluctuations in U.S. voting behavior, 1896-1964. American Political ScienceReview 65: 131–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramer, G. H. and Lepper, S. J. 1972. Congressional elections. In The dimensions of quantitative research in history, ed. Aydelotte, W. O.et al.Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.Google Scholar
Lepper, S. 1974. Voting behavior and aggregate policytargets. Public Choice 18: 67–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Logan, M. B. 1977. Short-term economic changes andindividual voting behavior. Unpublished paper, Yale University.Google Scholar
Marcus, G. B., and Converse, P. E. 1978. A dynamicsimultaneous equation model of electoral choice. American Political Science Review 73: 1055–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okner, B. A. 1980. Total U.S. taxes and their effect on the distribution of family income in 1966 and 1970. In The economics of taxation, ed. Aaron, H. J., and Boskin, M. J.. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Pechman, J. A., and Okner, B. A. 1974. Who bearsthe tax burden? Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Robinson, W. S. 1950. Ecological correlation and thebehavior of individuals. American Sociological Review 15: 351–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stigler, G. J. 1973. General economic conditions and national elections. American Economics Review 63: 160–67.Google Scholar
Tufte, E. 1975. Determinants of the outcomes of midtermcongressional elections. American Political Science Review 69: 812–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tufte, E. 1978. Political control of the economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar