French and British Colonial Legacies in Education: Evidence from the Partition of Cameroon

Cameroon was partitioned between France and the United Kingdom after WWI and then reunited after independence. I use this natural experiment to investigate colonial legacies in education, using a border discontinuity analysis of historical census microdata from 1976. I find that men born in the deca...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of economic history 2019-09, Vol.79 (3), p.628-668
Main Author: Dupraz, Yannick
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anglophones
Bias
Census of Population
Censuses
Colonies & territories
Discontinuity
Dropping out
Economic development
Economic history
Economics and Finance
Education
Education policy
Experiments
Grade repetition
Humanities and Social Sciences
Men
Partition
Pedagogy
Plantations
Repetition
Reunification
School dropouts
Schools
Secondary schools
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Summary:Cameroon was partitioned between France and the United Kingdom after WWI and then reunited after independence. I use this natural experiment to investigate colonial legacies in education, using a border discontinuity analysis of historical census microdata from 1976. I find that men born in the decades following partition had, all else equal, one more year of schooling if they were born in the British part. This positive British effect disappeared after 1950, as the French increased education expenditure, and because of favoritism in school supply towards the Francophone side after reunification. Using 2005 census microdata, I find that the British advantage resurfaced more recently: Cameroonians born after 1970 are more likely to finish high school, attend a university, and have a high-skilled occupation if they were born in the former British part. I explain this result by the legacy of high grade repetition rates in the French-speaking education system and their detrimental effect on dropout.
ISSN:0022-0507
1471-6372
DOI:10.1017/S0022050719000299