This article explores how language policy affects the socioeconomic development of nation states through two channels: the individual’s exposure to and (in reference to an individual’s mother tongue) linguistic distance from the official language. In a cross-country framework the article first establishes a robust and sizeable negative relationship between an official language that is distant from the local indigenous languages and proxies for human capital and health. To establish this relationship as causal, we instrument language choice with a measure of geographic distance from the origins of writing. Next, using individual level data from India and a set of 11 African countries, we provide microempirical support on the two channels—distance from and exposure to the official language—and their implications for educational, health, occupational and wealth outcomes. Finally, we suggest policy implications based on our findings.

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The objective of increasing access to schooling has been successful in most of the developing world, with gross enrollment rates exceeding 100% even in many sub-Saharan African states. However, this sharp increase in enrollment has been accompanied by a worrying trend, where student-learning outcomes have either stagnated or even worsened. For instance, results indicate that less than onefourth of sixth-grade children reached the desired level of reading literacy in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, and Swaziland, and this reduces to less than 10% in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda, and Zambia. 1 Similarly, in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, up to 40% of young people who have attended primary school for 5 years have neither the essential skills to avoid lapsing into illiteracy nor the minimal qualifications to secure a modern sector job (UN ECOSOC 2011).The growing body of evidence on improving student outcomes has failed to provide clear solutions on how school quality and learning outcomes can be improved. As Banerjee et al. (2007) point out, a number of rigorous randomized evaluations confirm that spending more resources on conventional inputs like textbooks, flip charts, and additional teachers has no discernible impact on children's test scores. Similarly, Muralidharan (2013) notes that, in India, "there

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