Book Description

Three factors help to explain why school enrollments in the Northern United States were higher than those in the South and in most of Europe by 1850. One was affordability: the northern schools had lower direct costs relative to income. The second was the greater autonomy of local governments. The third was the greater diffusion of voting power among the citizenry in much of the North, especially in rural communities. The distribution of local political voice appears to be a robust predictor of tax support and enrollments, both within and between regions. Extra local voice raised tax support without crowding out private support for education. Mass public schooling is indispensible to modern economic growth. This paper explores the emergence and consequences of free schooling in the USA in the nineteenth century, focusing on voters' self interests rather than ideology or the role of great men, as emphasized in the existing literature. Using a political economy model I show that increases in both average property values and inequality in property holding were key to the emergence of free public education. These variables predict well the timing of free schooling introductions by states and districts. The consequences of universal free public schooling were immediate. Children's education became less dependent on parents' wealth, and geographical inequality in enrollment rates declined. The consolidation of basic school tax units from school districts into a municipality was popular in American cities in the late 19th century. Political economy theory predicts that consolidation as a federation of school districts would raise overall investment in public schooling and related minimum requirements for public schools such as a grade system. This view gains support from regression results using city level data collected from the 1880 census and the U.S. Office of Education Reports. Consolidation, measured by the rise of the share of school tax revenue from municipal taxation, encouraged the development of city school systems, especially by promoting the expansion of higher-grade schooling.