Education and Industrialization

Also beyond the role of education for denominational differences in economic development between Protestants and Catholics, the education of the population affected industrialization more generally. Using our digitized Prussian regional data of the 19th century, we find that basic education is significantly associated with non-textile industrialization in both phases of the Industrial Revolution. Our results suggest that the degree of industrialization would have been lower by one third had all Prussian counties only achieved the education level of the least educated county.

The Industrial Revolution was arguably the biggest transformation of the economy and has received a lot of attention among economic historians. While education is considered a key driver of economic development in modern days, scholars studying the Industrial Revolution in the technological leader country Britain have generally found formal education to be of no importance. By contrast, our results suggest that the education level of the population did in fact play an important role during the first and second phases of the Industrial Revolution in the follower country Prussia.

Here you can find a short non-technical overview on this topic.

Research paper:

Education and Catch-up in the Industrial Revolution (with S.O. Becker and E. Hornung). American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 3 (3): 92-126, 2011

Non-technical contributions:

Being the Educational World Leader Helped Prussia Catch up in the Industrial Revolution (with S.O. Becker and E. Hornung). VOX, 9.5.2010

Education and Socio-Economic Development during the Industrialization (with S.O. Becker). In: C. Diebolt, M. Haupert (eds.), Handbook of Cliometrics, 2nd ed., Berlin: Springer, 2019

How Luther’s Quest for Education Changed German Economic History: 9+5 Theses on the Effects of the Protestant Reformation (with S.O. Becker). In: J.-P. Carvalho, S. Iyer, J. Rubin (eds.), Advances in the Economics of Religion, International Economic Association Series, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 215-227, 2019

Material available only in German

Newspaper article:

Sind Protestanten schlauer? Die Zeit, No. 42, 12.10.2017, p. 76

Non-technical contributions:

Preussen während der Industriellen Revolution – rascher Aufholprozess dank Bildung (with S.O. Becker and E. Hornung). Ökonomenstimme, 7.6.2010

Die Bedeutung von Bildung für die Wirtschaftsentwicklung: Eine neue wirtschaftshistorische Forschungsagenda anhand preußischer Kreisdaten, Teil 2. ifo Schnelldienst 64 (1): 41-47, 2011