From Education to Democracy?

Abstract:

Existing literature looks at the cross–sectional correlation between education and democracy rather than at the within variation. Hence existing inferences may be potentially driven by omitted factors influencing both education and democracy in the long run. A causal link between education and democracy suggest that we should also see a relationship between change sin education and democracy suggests that we should also see a relationship between change sin education and changes in democracy. In other words, we should ask whether a given country (with its other characteristics held constant) is more likely to become more democratic as its population becomes more educated. We show that the answer to this question is no. Figure 1 illustrates this by plotting the change in the Freedom House democracy score between 1970 and 1995 versus the change in average years of schooling during the same time period? Countries that become more educated show no greater tendency to become more democratic.

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