Homeownership, Social Capital and Parental Voice in Schooling

We investigate the effects of home-ownership on parents' involvement in local school elections.

We use 2007 New Zealand school board of trustees data to examine whether schools where parents have high rates of home-ownership experience high parental voting turnout in elections. We also investigate whether homeownership influences the probability that a school board proceeds to election, indicating parental willingness to serve as a school trustee. Similarly, we examine whether state-owned social housing rates affect these outcomes.

We compile results initially without controlling for other factors, and then controlling for a wide range of other characteristics, to test the robustness of simple observed associations between home-ownership and state-ownership rates and outcome variables.

Our findings show no discernible effect of home-ownership on parental voting turnout in school elections after controls are added (contrary to the simple positive association), but a (robust) positive impact of both home-ownership and state-ownership rates on the probability that a school holds an election.