Proxy Voting for Future Generations: A Laboratory Experiment Using the General Public

Abstract

To realize policies that benefit the youth and future generations, discussions are being held on how to give the votes of children who are currently ineligible to vote, and even future unborn generations, to their parents or voters of the present generation to vote as their proxies. To examine the effect of proxy voting on future-friendly choices, we conducted a laboratory experiment with the general public, including parents. Participants were assigned the roles of present and future generations, and the present-generation participants voted on allocating payoffs between generations. Proxy votes for future-generation participants were granted to some present-generation participants. We found that proxy voting did not increase the proportion of votes for future-friendly choices compared to the case without proxy votes, which is consistent with previous studies involving university students. We also observed that the older the participants, the more likely they were to vote for future-friendly choices. Once age was controlled for, parents were less likely than non-parents to vote for future-friendly choices. From a consequentialist perspective, these results suggest that we should add a twist to proxy voting, examine non-proxy voting methods, or explore other measures.