French and British Colonial Legacies in Education: Evidence from the Partition of Cameroon

Yannick Dupraz

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: I use the partition of Cameroon between France and the UK after WWI and its reunification after independence to investigate colonial legacies in education. Using border discontinuity analysis, I find that Cameroonians born in the 1970s are 9 percentage points more likely to have completed high school if they were born in the former British part. French and British Cameroon started diverging after partition, but the British advantage disappeared when the French increased education expenditure in the 1950s. The resurgence of a British advantage is explained by the French legacy of high repetition rates and their detrimental effect on dropout.

Keywords: Africa; colonization; education; persistence; border discontinuity.JEL Classification: N37; I25; H52; O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: French and British Colonial Legacies in Education: Evidence from the Partition of Cameroon (2019)
Working Paper: French and British Colonial Legacies in Education: Evidence from the Partition of Cameroon (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:333

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