How does education affect adolescents’ political development?

•This paper employs a between-grades regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect education on political knowledge, participation and democratic values.•Using data on attitudes and knowledge among about 30,000 students from Greece, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden, we employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design in which we exploit the exogenous variation related to school entry age.•Results show that one year of additional schooling has no detectable effect on political knowledge, democratic values or political participation.

This paper employs a between-grades regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of education on political knowledge, intention to participate and democratic values. Using data on attitudes and knowledge among about 30,000 students from Greece, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden, we employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design in which we exploit the exogenous variation related to school entry age. By comparing students who are born around the New Year cut-off point we estimate the causal effect of the ninth year of schooling. Results show that an additional year of schooling has no detectable effect on political knowledge, democratic values or political participation.