Historical family structure as a predictor of liberal voting: Evidence from a century of Russian history

Family structure is considered a particularly important predictor of social and political devel-opment; historical differences in family size and other family characteristics cast a long shadow over societal development. This paper explores the effect of differences in historical family size on political behavior based on within-country variations in this characteristic in Russia. Unlike most papers on historical legacies, we trace the effect of family size over a century of Russian history with a focus on the first competitive and free elections in Russia-to the Constituent Assembly-held in 1917 and on the presidential elections in post-Soviet Russia in 1996 and 2000. Mean family size is measured based on the census data for 1897. We find a robust and significant association between smaller family size and a voting preference for parties that are economically liberal, which holds despite differences in the political, economic, and social environment be-tween the 1910s and 1990s & COPY; 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.