"Educational take-off and the role of wealth"

What is the role of a society’s wealth in influencing basic educational choices? Although the theoretical literature provides several possible answers, from an empirical viewpoint the response to this question is not straightforward. Indeed, nowadays, such an issues cannot be typically inspected before starting the college, due to the compulsory public schooling laws in force at lower levels in nearly all countries. We investigate this problem by employing a newly collected and unique dataset covering Sicilian wealth shares in the mid-nineteenth century (in the form of property and land rents that were, by far, the highest sources of wealth at the time) and primary school enrollment at the municipal level in the year 1858, when schools were available in almost each municipality but with no obligation to attend them. Our identification strategy relies on the historical heritage of seismic events, that took place since the 1693 Val di Noto earthquake, in shaping mid-nineteenth century land and property distribution. Results of the analysis show that the household wealth is strongly associated with the decision to enroll children in non-compulsory school. Our findings prove to be robust under different settings and changes in variables construction. In addition, we highlight that the wealth effect is only triggered beyond a certain threshold of rent and document long-lasting impacts of wealthy households on a series of institutional and economic outcomes, such as voting, political competition, literacy and industrialization.