The Last or Lasting Samurai? The Impact of Secondary Education Expansion on Elite Attainment and Occupational Sorting after Japan’s Meiji Restoration

Hidehiko Ichimura (), Yasuyuki Sawada (), Yutaro Takayasu () and Mari Tanaka ()
Additional contact information
Hidehiko Ichimura: University of Arizona, Department of Economics
Yasuyuki Sawada: University of Tokyo, Faculty of Economics
Yutaro Takayasu: Hitotsubashi University, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study
Mari Tanaka: University of Tokyo

No 18924, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: When societies transition from hereditary to meritocratic systems, to what extent does educational expansion broaden access to elite positions and change inherited patterns of occupational sorting? We study Japan after the Meiji Restoration, which abolished samurai hereditary privileges in public-sector positions and modernized education. Exploiting cohort-specific discontinuities in access to secondary schooling created by the expansion of public secondary schools, we find that greater access increased elite attainment among both samurai and commoner families, but most additional elites entered sectors historically associated with their family background. Many had non-elite fathers, indicating greater upward intergenerational mobility into elite status.

Keywords: social mobility; intergenerational mobility; secondary education; social transition; history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I26 J62 N35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18924.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:iza:izadps:dp18924

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().