"Every Catholic Child in a Catholic School": Historical Resistance to State Schooling, Contemporary Private Competition, and Student Achievement across Countries

Martin R. West () and Ludger Woessmann
Additional contact information
Martin R. West: Harvard University

No 3818, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Nineteenth-Century Catholic doctrine strongly opposed state schooling. We show that countries with larger shares of Catholics in 1900 (but without a Catholic state religion) tend to have larger shares of privately operated schools even today. We use this historical pattern as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of contemporary private competition on student achievement in cross-country student-level analyses. Our results show that larger shares of privately operated schools lead to better student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading and to lower total education spending, even after controlling for current Catholic shares.

Keywords: student achievement; private school competition; Catholic schools (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 L33 N30 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2008-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-his, nep-hrm and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2010, 120(546), F229-F255

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Related works:
Journal Article: 'Every Catholic Child in a Catholic School': Historical Resistance to State Schooling, Contemporary Private Competition and Student Achievement across Countries (2010)
Working Paper: \"Every catholic child in a catholic school\": Historical resistance to state schooling, contemporary private competition and student achievement across countries (2010)
Working Paper: “Every Catholic Child in a Catholic School”: Historical Resistance to State Schooling, Contemporary Private Competition, and Student Achievement across Countries (2008)
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