Discussant: Jana Foxe, Ph.D. Student
“When Women Win: Land Lotteries and Civic Participation in Georgia”
Alexandra Cirone, Cornell University
(co-authored with Aaron Childree and Harry Dienes)
Abstract: We exploit the 1805 Georgia Land Lottery to estimate the effect of wealth on political participation, as measured by petitions to the Georgia state legislature. We argue that a positive shock to wealth can incentivize winners to protect their new assets using democratic channels, and provide them a change in social status that increases civic participation via petitioning. Importantly, we also focus on a never before studied population -- that of female land lottery applicants and winners, who were widows allowed to enter Georgia’s first land lottery. Widows were particularly positioned to benefit from such a windfall, due to inheritance laws and dower rights in Georgia that allowed women to retain property via trust. Using micro-level data on land lottery winners and losers, land plots, and petition outcomes from 1805-1820, we estimate the causal effect of wealth windfalls on democratic participation.