blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/uk_politics/www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/Tuesday December 20 2005
Right you are, son
By Ros Taylor / UK politics 12:46pm
Daughters, as Mr Bennett observed in Pride and Prejudice, can be a trial. But he never suggested that they were less likely to make him vote Tory.
That conclusion comes from new research analysing the data in the British Household Panel Survey. Professor Andrew Oswald and Dr Nattavudh Powdthavee have found a link between female offspring and a propensity to support Labour or the Lib Dems. Sixty-six percent of Britons with three sons and no daughters voted for one of the two parties, but 78% of parents with three daughters and no sons did so.
The academics also found that each time a couple had another daughter, the likelihood that they would switch away from the Tories increased. A similar trend was identified among German fathers.
Prof Oswald and Dr Powdthavee explain the findings by explaining that "through subconscious concern for their daughters, [parents] become sympathetic to the 'female' desire for more public spending and thus a steeper income tax schedule. Similarly, a mother with many sons becomes sympathetic to the 'male' case for lower taxes and a smaller supply of public goods".
Maybe - but if that were the case, you might expect fewer women to vote Conservative anyway. In fact, according to the Fawcett Society's data, it's only among the C1 social grouping that men are significantly more likely to vote Tory than women.
So what exactly happens in female-dominated households that makes them more susceptible to socialism? Get thee to a nunnery, Prof Oswald - and take Dr Powdthavee along.