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Title: Did Freemasonry Help Solve the Common Good Problem? An Examination of the Historical Expansion of American Education in the Western United States

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2010

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Abstract: This paper examines the role that American Freemasonry played in the historical expansion of the American educational system. I find evidence that 19th century Freemasonry had a significant positive impact on educational enrollment during and after the rapid rise of the `common school' in the late 19th century. And in what is a striking example of the `path dependence' of social institutions, I show that this effect persisted through the expansion of American high schools in the 1910s-1940s even after the waning of the influence of this organization. I provide evidence that Freemasonry's impact was particularly significant in areas that were the most heterogeneous - both ethnically and religiously. This, combined with the the further observation that areas with more Freemasons had higher levels of local taxation, suggests that Freemasonry helped communities overcome the common good problem. I provide evidence against potential reverse causality by demonstrating that Freemasons did not tend to migrate to areas with existing public education systems. Further, by exploiting a panel data set of enrollment data, I provide evidence that unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity are not driving the observed relationship. In a voting model augmented to allow for altruism I demonstrate the plausibility of these results. In particular I show how a relatively small number of Freemasons could affect the equilibrium provision of public education and why it is unsurprising to find that the impact of Freemasonry is larger in more heterogeneous areas.

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Authors: Egel, Danial

Publisher: Association of Religion Data Archives

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education

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