Inequality and education in pre-industrial economies: Evidence from Spain

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate on institutions and economic development by examining the historical link between land access inequality and education. Using information from the 464 districts existent in mid-19 th century Spain, this paper confirms that there is a negative relationship between the fraction of farm labourers and male literacy rates. This result does not disappear when a large set of potential confounding factors are included in the analysis. The use of the Reconquest as a quasi-natural experiment allows us to rule out further concerns about potential endogeneity. In addition, controlling for different sources of spatial dependence does not explain away this result either. By analysing the rural-urban divide and the genderspecific information on the number of schools and teachers, as well as schooling enrolment rates, this paper also explores the mechanisms behind the observed relationship. As well as supply factors, our results show that demand effects also played a significant role in explaining the negative impact of inequality on education.

Engines of growth: essays in Swedish economic history

“…An emphasis on the role of political voice is also found in that theoretically and empirically study the role of landed elites in the United States, concluding that high land inequality was an impediment to educational investments during the high school-movement. Evidence on similar mechanisms that emphasize the negative influence of elite control and a limited political voice has been found in colonial Korea, Prussia, and Spain Beltran Tapia and Martínez-Galarraga, 2015;. Another strand of the literature, however, has stressed that political inequality was not necessarily a barrier to the spread of mass schooling since elites often supported its spread motivated by ethnic favoritism or social control motives Gao, 2015;, while a third body of work downplays the role of political factors and instead has stressed the key role of religion as a central driver of differences in human capital development, particularly emphasizing the role of the Reformation and the uneven spread of Protestantism (e.g., Becker and Woessmann, 2009).…”

A conflicted political will to levy local taxes: inequality and local school politics in Sweden, 1840–1900

“…In Timrå, the landless population was defined as 'crofters, craftsmen, boatmen, workers in general with their own households, as well as lodgers'. 13 In the Sundsvall region, the issue that divided landowners and the landless was not expenditure levels, and the goal of the smallholding farmers was not to block the rise of mass schooling, which was the concern of wealthy landowners in Prussia, Spain, England and Wales (Beltrán Tapia & Martinez-Galarraga, 2015;Cinnirella & Hornung, 2016;Goni, 2013). Instead, the local debate focused on what may be described as a free-rider problem; that is, that a group may benefit from a service without paying their share (Nilsson & Pettersson, 2008).…”

“…Engerman, Mariscal, & Sokoloff, 2009;Gallego, 2010;Galor, Moav, & Vollrath, 2009) and have shown how, for instance, landholding elites have blocked the expansion of schooling because they wanted to preserve the existing social order and reduce the mobility of their workforce (see Beltrán Tapia, 2013, and literature cited therein). The negative impact of economic and political inequality has been indicated by quantitative analyses of the distribution of political voice in the US prior to 1850 (Go & Lindert, 2010), the distribution of land in mid-19th-century Spain, the distribution of land in England and Wales in the late 19th century (Beltrán Tapia & Martinez-Galarraga, 2015;Goni, 2013), and landownership concentration in nineteenth-century Prussia (Cinnirella & Hornung, 2016).…”

Can school centralization foster human capital accumulation? A quasi‐experiment from early twentieth‐century Italy

“…See Cinnirella and Hornung, ‘Landownership concentration’, for Prussia; Cvrcek and Zajicek, ‘Making of a liberal education’, for Austria; Beltrán Tapia and Martinez‐Galarraga, ‘Inequality and education’, for Spain; Goñi, ‘Landed elites and education provision’, for England and Wales; and Andersson and Berger, ‘Elites and the expansion of education’, for Sweden.…”