Education as Liberation?

Willa Friedman, Michael Kremer, Edward Miguel and Rebecca Thornton

No 16939, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Scholars have long speculated about education's political impacts, variously arguing that it promotes modern or pro-democratic attitudes; that it instills acceptance of existing authority; and that it empowers the disadvantaged to challenge authority. To avoid endogeneity bias, if schooling requires some willingness to accept authority, we assess the political and social impacts of a randomized girls' merit scholarship incentive program in Kenya that raised test scores and secondary schooling. We find little evidence for modernization theory. Consistent with the empowerment view, young women in program schools were less likely to accept domestic violence. Moreover, the program increased objective political knowledge, and reduced acceptance of political authority. However, this rejection of the status quo did not translate into greater perceived political efficacy, community participation, or voting intentions. Instead, the perceived legitimacy of political violence increased. Reverse causality may help account for the view that education instills greater acceptance of authority.

JEL-codes: I20 O15 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
Note: ED POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (65)

Published as Willa Friedman & Michael Kremer & Edward Miguel & Rebecca Thornton, 2016. "Education as Liberation?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(329), pages 1-30, 01.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16939.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Education as Liberation? (2016)
Working Paper: Education as Liberation? (2016)
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:nbr:nberwo:16939

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16939

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().