Income, education and democracy

Stephen Parente (), Luis Felipe Saenz and Anna Seim ()
Additional contact information
Anna Seim: Stockholm University

Journal of Economic Growth, 2022, vol. 27, issue 2, No 2, 193-233

Abstract: Abstract In this paper we argue that a potentially important mechanism by which modernization leads to democratization is a rise in de facto power as more of the population becomes educated. Analyzing a model in which the polity dictates the pace of modernization through its choice of public education expenditures, we first show that (i) an autocrat must eventually fund public education as long as the masses begin with some de facto power even though it lowers the income of the group he represents, and (ii) an autocrat never relinquishes power unless de facto power increases as the economy modernizes. We then present evidence that increases in education and de facto power have very often preceded the transitions of autocratic regimes to democratic ones.

Keywords: Modernization; Democratization; De facto power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 O41 O47 P16 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10887-022-09203-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Income, Education and Democracy (2019)
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:kap:jecgro:v:27:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10887-022-09203-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10887/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10887-022-09203-7

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Growth is currently edited by Oded Galor

More articles in Journal of Economic Growth from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().