IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/albaec/023033.html

Education and Minority Language Loss: An Examination of Welsh and the 1870 Education Act

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Milner

    (University of Alberta)

Abstract

Empirical work examining long-term effects of education policy on language transmission is rare. I address this deficiency by studying how the 1870 Education Act affected the propensity to speak Welsh within Wales. The Act introduced compulsory schooling in many areas, and greatly increased funding in others. Using a difference-in-differences design, I find that exposure to either treatment decreased a child’s likelihood of becoming a monoglot Welsh speaker in adulthood, yet increased the total number of speakers, as bilingualism improved among those raised in Anglophone households. This eventually reversed, however, as children of the treated became less likely to speak Welsh.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Milner, 2026. "Education and Minority Language Loss: An Examination of Welsh and the 1870 Education Act," Working Papers 2026-08, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:albaec:023033
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~econwps/2026/wp2026-08.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:albaec:023033. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joseph Marchand (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deualca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.