VOTE TURNOUT OF 19TH AMENDMENT WOMEN - THE ENDURING EFFECT OF DISFRANCHISEMENT

''Nineteenth Amendment women'' are women in the United States who came of age during or just after the era when women could not vote. The ro ughly 4,000 such women included in the National Election Studies of 19 52-88 provide an unusual opportunity for testing whether general histo rical conditions during childhood and adolescence have enduring effect s. Despite common claims of cohort effects, some scholars remain skept ical because cohort effects are notoriously difficult to distinguish f rom age and period effects. Nineteenth Amendment women were in fact le ss likely to vote in the 1952-88 elections and this gender gap is uniq ue to the amendment cohorts. These results provide strong evidence for the enduring effects of a cohort's historical conditioning.