The Long-Term Effects of the Printing Press in sub-Saharan Africa

This article investigates the long-term consequences of the printing press in the nineteenth century sub-Saharan Africa on social capital nowadays. Protestant missionaries were the first to import the printing press and to allow the indigenous population to use it. We build a new geocoded dataset lo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American economic journal. Applied economics 2016-07, Vol.8 (3), p.69-99
Main Authors: Cagé, Julia, Rueda, Valeria
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
African history
Datasets
Democracy
Econometrics
Economic theory
Economics
Economics and Finance
Education
Humanities and Social Sciences
International
Literacy
Missionaries
Political behavior
Printing machinery
Protestantism
Religious missions
Social capital
Standard deviation
Studies
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Summary:This article investigates the long-term consequences of the printing press in the nineteenth century sub-Saharan Africa on social capital nowadays. Protestant missionaries were the first to import the printing press and to allow the indigenous population to use it. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant missions in 1903. This dataset includes, for each mission station, the geographic location and its characteristics, as well as the printing-, educational-, and health-related investments undertaken by the mission. We show that, within regions close to missions, proximity to a printing press is associated with higher newspaper readership, trust, education, and political participation.
ISSN:1945-7782
1945-7790
DOI:10.1257/app.20140379