Historical Missionary Activity, Schooling, and the Reversal of Fortunes: Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract

This paper shows that historical missionary activity has had a persistent effect on schooling outcomes, and contributed to a reversal of fortunes wherein historically richer ethnic groups are poorer today. Combining contemporary individual-level data with a newly constructed dataset on mission stations in Nigeria, we find that individuals whose ancestors were exposed to greater missionary activity have higher levels of schooling. This effect is robust to omitted heterogeneity, ethnicity fixed effects, and reverse causation. We find inter-generational factors and the persistence of early advantages in educational infrastructure to be key channels through which the effect has persisted. Consistent with theory, the effect of missions on current schooling is larger for population subgroups that have historically suffered disadvantages in access to education.

On the Dispensability of New Transportation Technologies: Evidence from the Heterogeneous Impact of Railroads in Nigeria

“…Importantly, this evidence supports our identification assumption that, within a state, geographic characteristics, and any pre-colonial advantages they might have conferred, are largely unrelated to contemporary development. However, and in accordance with previous studies, we find that missionary activity is strongly associated with development at the local level (Gallego and Woodberry, 2010;Nunn, 2014;Okoye and Pongou, 2014;Cagé and Rueda, 2016;Wantchekon et al, 2015). Local missionary activity has a positive impact on years of schooling, literacy, occupational choices, media access, household wealth and urbanization.…”

Colonial Legacy of Gender Inequality: Christian Missionaries in German East Africa

“…For example, available data and historic evidence do not permit analysis that reveals whether gender inequalities were created or merely exacerbated by the work of missionary societies. 125 As shown by Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn, 126 the origin of gender roles possibly date back to the early adoption of agricultural practices. Yet the observed results do provide strong confirmation of the hypothesis that missionary societies contributed to the formation of the gender roles and gender inequality witnessed today.…”

“…Second, the narrow focus on education and related formal and cultural institutions as the sole long-term effects essentially ignores the larger cultural impact that missionaries had on sociopolitical hierarchies and cultural behavior. 34 Okoye, for example, shows that missionaries actively subverted traditional institutions and that members of ethnic groups exposed to greater missionary activity developed increases in uncooperative behavior and have significantly less trust today in relatives, neighbors, members of the same ethnic group, and other individuals. 35 This casts serious doubt on the ascribed benefit of historic exposure to missionaries and their schooling.…”

Missionary Influence and Nationalist Reactions: The Case of Armenian Ottomans

“…A large and growing body of work in the field of economic history offers evidence that the historical presence of Christian missionaries, especially Protestant missionaries, positively influenced contemporary social and behavioral outcomes in former European colonies. Several studies have shown that missionaries contributed to increased human capital and economic prosperity by setting up schools and introducing the printing press, (Wietzke 2015;Bai and Kung 2015;Valencia Caicedo 2018;Castelló-Climent, Chaudhary, and Mukhopadhyay 2017;Michalopoulos, Putterman, and Weil 2018), expanding literacy and schooling (Bolt and Bezemer 2009;Gallego and Woodberry 2010;Mantovanelli 2014;Robert and Rachel 2017;Okoye and Pongou 2014), and spreading notions of civic engagement and democracy (Woodberry 2006(Woodberry , 2012Cagé and Rueda 2016). In most of these works, missionary activity is regarded as a direct, progressive, bottom-up form of Western institution building that undermined traditional structures.…”