Education, identity, and community: lessons from Jewish emancipation

Jean-Paul Carvalho, Mark Koyama and Michael Sacks ()

Public Choice, 2017, vol. 171, issue 1, No 18, 119-143

Abstract: Abstract Why do some minority communities take up opportunities for education while others reject them? To shed light on this, we study the impact of Jewish Emancipation in nineteenth century Europe on patterns of education. In Germany, non-religious and Reform Jews dramatically increased their rates of education. In the less developed parts of Eastern Europe, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities imposed unprecedented restrictions on secular education and isolated themselves from society. Explaining this bifurcation requires a model of education that is different from the standard human capital approach. In our model, education not only confers economic benefits but also transmits values that undermine the cultural identity of minority groups. We show that it is individually rational for agents who benefit least from rising returns to education to respond by reducing their investment in education. Group-level sanctions for high levels of education piggyback upon this effect and amplify it.

Keywords: Education; Cultural transmission; Human capital; Identity; Jewish history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 D63 D71 I24 J24 Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-016-0400-1

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