Several influential scholars have argued that increases in education improve levels of democracy. However, relevant challenges to this view have also figured prominently. In this article we tackle this controversy. We examine the link between education and democracy using an expanded dataset on educational attainment that covers most of the postwar era. We find that increases in levels of education improve levels of democracy and that the democratizing effect of education is more intense in poor countries.

Education has predictable effects on individuals’ income and cognitive abilities. Increases in education are also associated with favorable social outcomes. During the 20th century, several prominent scholars linked increases in education with improvements in democracy (Dahl, 1971; Friedman, 1962; Lipset, 1959). At the individual level, a well-established connection exists between increases in education and those values presumed to foster democratic governance, although there seems to be high cross-national variance in terms of its substantive impact. Findings connecting increases in overall levels of education with increases in levels of democracy, however, appear less convincing. As Lipset (1960: 39) noted, the evidence was stronger when looking at individual behavior within countries than in cross-national analyses. More recently, Acemoglu et al. (2005) challenged the entire premise, criticized the prior empirical literature, and presented evidence showing that increases in education within countries do not improve levels of democracy.

This article takes advantage of an expanded dataset on educational attainment that covers most of the postwar era (Barro and Lee, 2013) to examine the link between education and democracy. We find that increases in levels of education improve democracy and that the democratizing effect of education is more intense in poor countries.

Results The results appear in Table 1 with coefficients in bold and standard errors beneath. Tests and additional information appear at the bottom of the table. Table 1. System GMM results. View larger version The results are similar regardless of the dependent variable: levels of education have a positive and significant effect on levels of democracy.4 The results (specification i) imply that an additional year of schooling increases the “steady-state” value of democracy by 0.06, which is a rather large magnitude relative to the mean of democracy in the sample (0.53). The following GMM models, presented in Table 2, include interactions. We interact education with three alternative variables: income per capita, a categorical variable for OECD countries, and a categorical variable indicating if the country was rich (its income falling in the upper quartile in the 1950s and 1960s). Table 2. Models with interaction effects. View larger version The results using the Polity data are consistent: the democratizing effect of education is clearly stronger at low levels of income, in non-OECD countries, and in non-rich countries. In all cases, the coefficient for the interaction variable is statistically significant and in the expected direction. Figure 2 plots the direct effect of schooling on democracy at various levels of GDP per capita (with 90% confidence intervals). The results also tell us that an additional year of schooling increases the “steady-state” value of democracy by 0.09 at low levels of income (i.e., a log of GDP per capita equal to 4) and 0.01 at high levels of income (i.e., a log of GDP per capita equal to 11). Download Open in new tab Download in PowerPoint The results using the Freedom House/Bollen and the Unified Democracy Scores datasets also suggest that the democratizing effect of education is stronger at lower income levels, although the results are not as strong as with the Polity data. The coefficients for the interaction always have the correct sign. In the case of the first dataset, they are statistically significant for the two categorical indicators of wealth. When interacting education with the log of GDP per capita, the coefficient is not significant, yet plotting the results reveals differences in the effect of education between poor and rich countries. An additional year of schooling increases the “steady-state” value of democracy by 0.05 at low levels of income (i.e., a log of GDP per capita equal to 4) and 0.03 at high levels of income (i.e., a log of GDP per capita equal to 11).5 When using the Unified Democracy Scores the interactions fail to reach statistical significance. Yet, when interacting education with the log of GDP per capita we find that an additional year of schooling increases the “steady-state” value of democracy by 0.17 at low levels of income (i.e., a log of GDP per capita equal to 4) and 0.11 at high levels of income (i.e., a log of GDP per capita equal to 11).6 With regards to the control variables, the results support the view that oil and gas rents are problematic for democracy. However, there is no support backing the view that a smaller population is more conducive to democracy.

Conclusion This paper revisited the link between education and democracy. Several prominent scholars have argued for a causal relationship, but the evidence appeared less than convincing. Our analysis shows that increasing levels of education among the population have a positive effect on levels of democracy. Moreover, we show that this effect is stronger among less developed countries. These findings contribute to a rich literature that seeks to understand the democratizing effects of education. It also has implications for policies designed to promote democracy through schooling. Our results show that increases in education should have the greatest impact on raising levels of democracy in places like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Haiti, Nepal, and most of sub-Saharan Africa.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Pablo Pinto, Ernesto Calvo, Karen Remmer, Justin Kirkland, Jim Granato, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments. All errors and omissions are our own.

Declaration of conflicting interest

None declared. Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Supplementary material

The replication files are available at: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/researchandpolitics

Notes 1.

Our paper also uses different data from that of Sanborn and Thyne (2014) to test this hypothesis. Our measure of educational attainment covers more countries and a larger time period, and is widely used, which facilitates comparability. In addition, we use the full range of Polity scores as well as alternative measures of democracy rather than dichotomizing Polity’s main index. While they focus on transition across this threshold, we use a more refined measure to examine changes in the levels of democracy. 2.

For instance, persistence in the dependent variable can lead to weak instruments and losses in asymptotic efficiency. See, Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998). 3.

We use the xtabond2 package for STATA with the collapse option to limit instrument proliferation (two-step estimation). 4.

Acemoglu et al. (2005) concluded that education had no effect on democracy because they relied on fixed-effects OLS models and difference GMM rather than on the more appropriate system GMM (Bobba and Coviello, 2007). When we run difference GMM with the updated dataset and the alternative dependent variables, we also fail to find a significant coefficient for the education variable. 5.

The mean Freedom House/Bollen Score in the sample is 0.52 (it goes from 0 to 1). The marginal effect of education goes from 0.02 (low income country) to 0.01 (high income country). 6.

The mean Unified Democracy Score in the sample is −0.02 (minimum of −2.11 and maximum of 2.26). The marginal effect of education goes from 0.05 (low income country) to 0.03 (high income country).