Did railways affect literacy? Evidence from India

Latika Chaudhary and James Fenske
Additional contact information
Latika Chaudhary: Graduate School of Defense Management, Naval Postgraduate School

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study the effect of railroads, the single largest public investment in colonial India, on human capital. Using district-level data on literacy, we find railroads had positive effects on literacy, in particular on male and English literacy. We employ two identification strategies. First, we exploit synthetic panel variation contained in cohort-specific literacy rates due to differences in the timing of railroad exposure of different cohorts within the same district and census year. We find a one standard deviation increase in railroad exposure raises literacy by 0.29 standard deviations. Second, we use distance from an early railway plan as an instrument for district railway exposure in the cross section and find results of similar magnitude. We show that railroads increased literacy by raising secondary, rather than primary, schooling. Our mediation analysis suggests that non-agricultural income and opportunities for skilled employment are important mechanisms, while agricultural income is not.

Keywords: Colonialism; Railways; Literacy JEL codes: N75; N35; R40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-geo and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w ... rp_1320_-_fenske.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Did railways affect literacy? Evidence from India (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1320

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Margaret Nash ().