Landownership concentration and the expansion of education

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of landownership concentration on school enrollment for nineteenth century Prussia. Prussia is an interesting laboratory given its decentralized educational system and the presence of heterogeneous agricultural institutions. We find that landownership concentration, a proxy for the institution of serfdom, has a negative effect on schooling. This effect diminishes substantially towards the end of the century. Causality of this relationship is confirmed by introducing soil texture to identify exogenous farm-size variation. Panel estimates further rule out unobserved heterogeneity. We present several robustness checks which shed some light on possible mechanisms.

Land Inequality, Education, and Marriage: Empirical Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Prussia

“…Therefore a shift in the balance of power towards the owners of physical capital and the passing of land reforms and education reforms can be interpreted in the light of such a theory. In this vein, Cinnirella and Hornung (2016) show that agricultural reforms and the gradual emancipation of the peasants during the nineteenth century in Prussia changed the underlying relationship between landownership inequality and education. Lindert (2004) describes the factors which foster or retard the expansion primary and secondary education across the world.…”

“…Since the political channel cannot play a role in individual marriages decisions, such a connection seems debatable. However, Cinnirella and Hornung (2016) argue that land inequality determined the individual demand for schooling. Here we discuss whether land inequality might also play a role in determining individual marriage decisions.…”

“…In a recent article, Cinnirella and Hornung (2016) propose an alternative mechanism based on the labor relations between the (landed) elite and the masses. Due to the decentralized character of public schooling in Prussia (Lindert, 2004), elites were not in the position to delay the expansion of mass schooling through the political channel.…”

“…Thus, their position of power allowed them to directly interfere with the education decisions of the peasantry. Cinnirella and Hornung (2016) provide evidence for such exercise of authority by documenting the relationship between landownership concentration and peasants' investments in education. They show that the regional concentration of noble large landowners is associated with lower enrollment rates in mass primary schooling.…”

“…We expand the unique dataset compiled by Cinnirella and Hornung (2016) to include information about female marriage rates and sex ratios so as to estimate the relationship of interest throughout the nineteenth century. This dataset further includes the distribution of landownership by size, primary school enrollment rates, and a range of development indicators (see also Becker et al, 2014).…”