Can autocracy promote literacy? Evidence from a cultural alignment success story

Nuno Palma and Jaime Reis

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 186, issue C, 412-436

Abstract: Do countries with less democratic forms of government necessarily have lower literacy rates as a consequence? Using a random sample of more than 9000 individuals from military archives in 20th century Portugal, we show that 20-year old males were 50% more likely to end up literate under a nondemocratic regime than under a more democratic one. Our results are robust to controlling for a host of factors including economic growth, the disease environment, and regional fixed effects. We argue for a political economy and cultural explanation for the relative success of the authoritarian regime in promoting basic education.

Keywords: Anthropometrics; Economic history of education; Public schooling provision; Political economy of development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 I24 I25 N33 N34 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121000755
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Can Autocracy Promote Literacy? Evidence from a Cultural Alignment Success Story (2021)
Working Paper: Can autocracy promote literacy? evidence from a cultural alignment success story (2018)
Working Paper: Can Autocracy Promote Literacy? Evidence from a Cultural Alignment Success Story (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:186:y:2021:i:c:p:412-436

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.02.011

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().