National Service Experience Powerfully Increases Youth Political Participation

The United States has one of the, if not the, lowest rates of youth political participation in the world. Low, and by some accounts declining, rates of citizen engagement threaten to undercut the social capital that holds communities together and undermine the basic pillars of democracy. However, little is known about how to address dismal rates of youth civic participation. In this paper, we examine the causal effect of a recently proposed large-scale solution: national service. Leveraging a large scale sample of young people matched to nationwide voter files and a unique natural experiment, we explore the causal effect of admittance and participation in Teach For America---a prominent national service program that integrates college graduates into low-income communities for two years. We find that Teach For America has a large and a long-lasting effect on youth political participation---substantially increasing voter turnout rates among participants. Our results show that national service programs have great potential to help narrow the stubborn gap between young and older citizens in the United States.