Papers
Job Market Paper
Did Enfranchisement Lead to Representation?
@unpublished{praninskas2026enfranchisement,
author = {Praninskas, Gailius and Munroe, Ellen},
title = {Did Enfranchisement Lead to Representation?},
year = {2026},
note = {Job Market Paper}
}
Did enfranchisement make Parliament more representative of the population? If so, was it because politicians from poorer families were elected, or because politicians of every background responded to poor voter demand? We study Britain's democratisation, from a plutocracy to universal suffrage, combining biographical records of MPs with over 17 million probate records to place politicians, their fathers and enfranchised voters on a single wealth scale from 1858 to 1990. As the vote reached the poor, Parliament drew on politicians from poorer backgrounds: the share of MPs whose fathers fell outside the wealthiest 1 percent rose from one in ten to three in four. Using variation across birth cohorts in the franchise at the start of a typical political career, we attribute around half of this change to enfranchisement. Across constituencies, where an Act enfranchised the poor, voters rewarded the party that claimed to represent them, the Liberals in 1885 and Labour after 1918. Descriptive representation led to substantive representation: members from poorer backgrounds advocated more for what poorer voters wanted, while members already in office did not respond when the vote reached the poor in their own seats. The poor entered Parliament a generation after they could vote, and at scale only once the trade unions and the Labour party paid for their candidacies. Enfranchisement moved Britain from a plutocracy toward a common-interest state mostly by changing who sat in Parliament, and who sat changed only once the poor could afford to stand.
- 2026: Linnaeus Inequality Summit; KIZ Political Economy Workshop; HYRCE Liège; 2nd Warwick–LSE Political Economy PhD Conference; LSE SPEECH
- 2025: Royal Economic Society Annual Conference; Danish Historical Political Economy Workshop; 14th Annual Lithuanian Conference on Economic Research; Warwick–LSE Political Economy PhD Conference; Oxford University Political Economy Work in Progress; LSE Political Science Political Economy Work in Progress; LSE SPEECH
- 2024: LSE Workshop on Institutions and Political Economy; LSE SPEECH
Key Findings
▶
1. Britain in 1860 was a plutocracy, and Parliament came to resemble the country as the vote reached the poor
In the 1860s the average MP died with roughly 250 times the wealth of the average adult, and four in five MPs died richer than 99 of every 100 of their contemporaries. By the 1980s the ratio had fallen to 20. Measured by family background, the share of MPs whose fathers fell outside the wealthiest 1 percent rose from one in ten to three in four.
▶
2. About half of the change is attributable to enfranchisement
We compare MPs who entered Parliament at the same election but were born in different years, and so began their political careers under different franchises. Cohorts who came of age under a wider franchise were recruited from poorer families. Each extension of the vote lowered the wealth of the median elector, and the family wealth of new members followed with a lag.
▶
3. The poor entered Parliament only once they could afford to stand, through the trade unions and the Labour party
Even unsuccessful candidates were far wealthier than the population: the wealth gap between candidates and the population was six times the gap between candidates who won and lost. Voters could only choose among those who stood. Members were unpaid until 1911 and paid for their own elections, so the poor entered at scale only after the unions and Labour paid for their candidacies, a generation after they could vote. Where an Act enfranchised the poor, voters rewarded the party that claimed to represent them, the Liberals in 1885 and Labour after 1918.
▶
4. Descriptive representation led to substantive representation
Within the same parliament and party, MPs from poorer families devoted more of their speeches to redistribution, and across issues the class gradient in what voters wanted lines up with the wealth gradient in what MPs said. Members already in office did not respond when the vote reached the poor in their own seats: of the difference in speech between members for poorer and richer seats, six percent comes from the same member moving to a poorer seat and ninety-four percent from poorer seats electing different members.
Working Papers
Political Dynasties and Wealth
Which asset does a political dynasty transmit, inherited wealth or political capital? We use changes in bequest taxation and close elections among first-time candidates to separate the two. While the relative return to wealth has fallen, the relative likelihood of fathering an MP by acquiring office has increased.
Privatising Common Property: Evidence from the Welsh Parliamentary Enclosures
Economics literature stresses the importance of well-defined, private property rights for efficiency and development. However, the economic impact of transitions from communal to private ownership remains poorly understood. We construct a novel dataset from historical records to investigate this within the context of the Welsh Parliamentary Enclosures, a series of parliamentary acts spanning 1760–1936 that transferred communally-owned or managed land to sole proprietorship. The analysis presents four findings: (1) contrary to a common historical narrative that enclosures reduced population, there is no evidence of this in Wales, (2) there was no significant change in farming occupations post-enclosure, again contrary to a historical narrative, (3) enclosure did not correlate with grain market prices in Wales, and (4) surprisingly, parishes post-enclosure have significantly lower land value and lower land ownership concentration relative to an unenclosed control group. We explain our findings in light of issues stemming from creating many fragmented land holdings, which generate hold-up and other contracting problems.
Work in Progress
Pecuniary Selection or Incentives? Political Entry and Agency
The wealthy may enter politics because they can afford to or because office pays them, with opposite implications for the competence and representativeness of legislatures and for reforms to the pay and cost of office. In a Roy model of political entry, we identify both from the returns to office among winning and losing candidates.
Wealth is Health? Life Expectancy and Public Goods
How does wealth affect life expectancy, and what reduces this inequality? We measure the wealth-longevity gradient using yearly individual-level data in England and Wales from 1858–1995 and examine how it changed with the expansion of public healthcare, focusing particularly on the introduction of the NHS and the rollout of public hospitals. We also explore how this relationship differs over time and by gender, with particular attention to maternal mortality where wealth inequalities translate most sharply into survival differences, and where access to healthcare is especially critical. Understanding what flattened the gradient matters for understanding how introducing public health care systems reduce inequalities. For low- and middle-income countries building healthcare systems today, where policymakers face similar choices about public versus private provision with limited evidence on distributional impacts.