Income inequality and voter participation in the Philippines
Date
2013-10
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Abstract
There exists a wide-rcmging hori~on of issues when it comes to politrcal
economy, one of which is the relationship between income inequality and voter
turnout. These two variables have been on the c.enter of scholarly attention for
when linkect, the correlation can be used in clarifying the citizens' view of how the
government works for them. Existing literaturesĀ· offer three perspectives: one
stating that such inequality depresses turnout, the other, the contrary and the iast
lies on the middle ground. In this paper, the authors attempt to find the
connection between these variables under the Philippine context using the
hypothesis that economic segregation has a positive impact on electoral
participation. Generating three models on two time periods (2004 and 201 0)
through logistic regression, they have found ambiguous results. For both periods,
the P60/P50 andP50/P20 ratios are consistent in being a significant factor in the
regional-level voting preferences. However, theĀ· positive correlation of both ratios
with voter participation proliferated oniy in 2004; in 2010, the P50iP20 ratio
became negatively linked with the said dependent variable. Furthermore, the
P80/P20 ratio was deemed to be only significant and positively associated with
voter participation in the 2004 Elections, while it remained positive in the 2010
Elections, the statistic became insignificant. Impacts of socioeconomic attributes
were also included in the analysis. The dataset used was obtained from the 2004
and 2010 Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Modules and 2003 and 2009
Family Income and Expenditure Surveys.
Description
Keywords
income inequality, voter participation, Philippine elections