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Title: Rural Education, Nation-building, and Human Capital in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: Can low-quality investments in schooling displace the creation of higher-quality schools in the long run? I investigate whether Mexico's rapid expansion of rural education during the 1920s successfully promoted human capital acquisition. By combining newly digitized schools data with census samples from 1930 and 1960, I find that Mexico's first major expansion in public education increased literacy rates and language homogenization, but did not induce primary school completion. Through a difference-indifferences analysis, I first show that rural schools achieved short-run education goals central to Mexico's nation-building efforts: by 1930, treated cohorts were up to 10% more likely to be literate and, among indigenous communities, up to 20% more likely to speak Spanish and 4% less likely to speak an indigenous language. I then show that while literacy gains persist into 1960, other long-run education measures suggest a lack of broader human capital growth. Affected cohorts were more likely to have attended but less likely to have completed primary school. These findings highlight the potential drawbacks of rapid, low-quality investments in human capital: the rural school program increased literacy in the short run, but without additional public investments in education, affected cohorts may have had fewer opportunities to complete primary education.

Url: https://www.isid.ac.in/~acegd/acegd2023/papers/ArielGomez.pdf

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Authors: Gómez, Ariel

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA - Ancestry Full Count Data, IPUMS International

Topics: Education

Countries: Mexico