The colonial legacy of education: evidence from of Tunisia

Mhamed Ben Salah, Cédric Chambru and Maleke Fourati

No 411, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: This paper uses spatial variations in the enrolment rate of Tunisian pupils in 1931 to estimate the weight of colonial history on medium- and long-run educational attainment. We assemble a new dataset on the location of public primary schools and the number of pupils and teachers, together with population data for 1931. We match these data with information on education at the district level, derived from two population censuses conducted in 1984 and 2014. We find that a one per cent increase in the enrolment rate in 1931 is associated with a 2.37 percentage points increase in the literacy rate in 1984, and a 1.89 percentage points increase in 2014. We further investigate the exposure to colonial public primary education across different age cohorts. We find that our results are mainly driven by older generations, and tend to fade for younger cohorts. While we provide qualitative evidence that a cultural transmission of education may have contributed to this persistence, we also argue that the continuous effort and investment made by Tunisian governments to achieve universal primary enrolment best explain the decline in spatial disparities in educational attainment.

Keywords: Colonial investment; colonial settlers; primary education; literacy; Tunisia. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 H52 I25 I28 N37 N47 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05, Revised 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Colonial Legacy of Education: Evidence from of Tunisia (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:411

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