The Colonial Legacy of Education: Evidence from of Tunisia

Mhamed Ben Salah (mhamed.ben@graduateinstitute.ch), Cédric Chambru and Maleke Fourati (maleke.fourati@msb.tn)
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Mhamed Ben Salah: IHEID, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/academic-departments/international-economics
Maleke Fourati: Mediterranean School of Business, South Mediterranean University

No 13-2022, IHEID Working Papers from Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies

Abstract: We study the effect of exposure to colonial public primary education on contemporary education outcomes in Tunisia. We assemble a new data set on the location of schools with the number of pupils by origin, along with population data during the French protectorate (1881-1956). We match those with contemporary data on education at both district and individual level. We find that the exposure of local population to colonial public primary education has a long-lasting effect on educational outcomes, even when controlling for colonial investments in education. A one per cent increase in Tunisian enrolment rate in 1931 is associated with a 1.69 percentage points increase in literacy rate in 2014. Our results are driven by older generations, namely individuals who attended primary schools before the 1989/91 education reform. We suggest that the efforts undertaken by the Tunisian government after independence to promote schooling finally paid off after 40 years and overturned the effects of history.

Keywords: Colonial investment; Primary education; Tunisia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 N37 N47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2022-05-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-his and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gii:giihei:heidwp13-2022

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