Title: Family culture and childcare policies (with Francesca Carta and Lorenzo De Masi)

Abstract: We analyze the influence of past family culture on contemporary preferences for public childcare among U.S. natives and current legislative activity in the House of Representatives. We proxy family culture using historical family principles - equal inheritance and cohabitation- that characterize family structures prior to modern welfare states (Todd, 1983), thus minimizing reverse causality issues. By employing the prevalent family principles in the ancestral countries of origin, we effectively isolate the influence of family culture from other institutional and economic factors. Results from the General Social Survey (GSS) indicate that individuals with ancestors from egalitarian countries are more prone to advocate for public spending in childcare, while those with forebears cohabiting in large family units tend to rely less on formal childcare. Similarly, U.S. representatives from districts with a widespread egalitarian culture among the population's ancestry, as estimated by census data, sponsor more child-related bills, whereas those from cohabitation-oriented districts sponsor less. These findings are specific to children's policies and remain consistent despite political selection. Furthermore, we manually collect extensive genealogical data to identify each politician's ancestral family background. Our findings demonstrate that family culture of congressional districts consistently influences their representatives' legislative engagement with children's policies even when controlling for the politician's own family culture. This provides conclusive evidence that representatives prioritize their constituents' preferences over their own.