TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cascio, Elizabeth U
AU  - Washington, Ebonya L
TI  - Valuing the Vote:  The Redistribution of Voting Rights and State Funds Following the Voting Rights Act of 1965
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17776
PY  - 2012
Y2  - January 2012
DO  - 10.3386/w17776
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17776
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17776.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Elizabeth U. Cascio
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Hanover, NH 03755
Tel: (603) 646-4096
Fax: (603) 646-2122
E-Mail: elizabeth.u.cascio@dartmouth.edu

Ebonya L. Washington
Yale University
Box 8264
37 Hillhouse, Room 36
New Haven, CT 06520
Tel: 203/432-9901
Fax: 203/432-6323
E-Mail: ebonya.washington@yale.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2012-05-25
AB  - The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) has been called one of the most effective pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history, having generated dramatic increases in black voter registration across the South. We show that the expansion of black voting rights in some southern states brought about by one requirement of the VRA - the elimination of literacy tests at voter registration - was accompanied by a shift in the distribution of state aid toward localities with higher proportions of black residents, a finding that is consistent with models of distributive politics. Our estimates imply an elasticity of state transfers to counties with respect to turnout in presidential elections - the closest available measure of enfranchisement - of roughly one.
ER  -