Educational Take-off and the Role of Wealth

What is the role of a society's wealth in influencing educational choices? Although the theoretical literature provides several possible answers, from an empirical viewpoint answering question is not straightforward. Indeed, nowadays such an issue cannot be typically inspected before starting the college, due to the compulsory public education laws in force at lower education levels in nearly all countries. We investigate this problem by employing a unique dataset covering Sicilian wealth shares and primary school enrollment in the year 1858 at municipal level. This represents an ideal setting to study our research question as, at that time, schools at the lowest grade levels were available in almost each Sicilian municipality, but their attendance was not compulsory. Our identification strategy relies on the historical heritage of seismic events in shaping mid-19th century land and property distribution, which allowed for the emergence of a class of "wealthy" households. Results of the analysis show that, even in an almost entirely agrarian society, household wealth played a decisive role in educational choices: an increase of 10