Outline

This thesis aims at contributing new empirical evidence to the ongoing discussion of the different, aforementioned strands; however, the focus is mainly on the role of human capital with a special emphasis on its long term development and its persistence. Under study is the state of human capital in the countries in today’s developing regions during the period from 1880 to 1960, a time when many of these countries were still colonies of the European powers. By applying age-heaping, this thesis presents new human capital estimates for world regions and a time period for which other human capital indicators are scarce or absent. In using this new dataset, it is possible to assess specific aspects of human capital, helping to better understand its role in the long-run economic development of the countries under observation.

Chapter 2 addresses directly the aforementioned discussion of possible channels that influence long-term economic growth. To do so, this chapter presents new estimates of human capital in 18th and 19th century Africa, Asia, and the Americas and reassesses the colonial legacy debate by examining the influence of institutions, human capital, and geography on the long-term economic performance of the countries under study. By using the age-heaping methodology, it is possible to trace the basic numeracy trends of 68 former colonies. The competing views are systematically tested by combining this new empirical evidence with the data introduced by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2001) to assess the quality of institutions. In contrast to their view, Glaeser et al. (2004) argued that it might have been differences in the accumulation of human capital – mainly caused by the import of human capital from Europe – that decided whether these countries are rich or poor today. Our newly introduced human capital data supports Glaeser’s (2004)

argument; however, we argue that another growth factor is the idiosyncratic educational differences between the indigenous populations of the countries under study.

In Chapter 3, we turn our attention to the educational situation on the African continent. Today, Africa reveals underdevelopment in terms of human capital compared to other world regions. At the same time, a high variation between the countries is identifiable. In recent years, a number of studies on colonial education spurred discussion on the historical roots of education and schooling in Africa (e.g. Bolt and Bezemer 2009, Huillery 2009, Gallego and Woodberry 2010, Gallego 2010, Frankema 2012). For instance, different schooling policies of the colonial powers meant the development of different educational systems in Africa: the British government focused on basic education of the broad population, while France was more interested in educating the elite. The questions under investigation in this chapter are whether the differences in educational achievement observed today in Africa could be traced back into the colonial period. How does human capital develop over the past century? Which determinants in the past shaped the educational landscape in Africa? Do these factors still matter for explaining the differences in African literacy and schooling levels today? To address these questions, the age-heaping method is employed. Thereby an important human capital indicator can be added to the fragmentary data base for Africa. The new estimates cover the main part of the period from 1880 to 1960 for 34 African countries.

Chapter 4 then highlights an important aspect of human capital accumulation, namely gender inequality in education. For economic development, gender inequality is a large burden as the economic potential of women is left largely untapped and cannot be used in the growth process. Gender inequality in education is particularly harmful for development because it restricts the opportunities of women in the labour market. When examining the difference in the growth performance between South and East Asia in the

be explained by differences in gender inequality in education. To better understand the reasons for these differences, this chapter traces the human capital development disaggregated by gender of 14 Asian countries for the period 1900-1960, using the age-heaping method, and aims to answer questions like: Did gender inequality in education already exist during the first half of the 20^th century? How did the gender gap develop over time? Which factors played a role in determining the different levels of educational attainment of men and women? Did factors that are intrinsic within a society, such as social and cultural norms, matter more than factors influenced more directly by the political decision makers? In examining this development, a special emphasis lies on the gender gap in numeracy and its determinants. In particular, the validity of a ‘U-hypothesis of gender equality’ is tested, implying that gender equality in numeracy declines at initial stages of development and increases again with higher numeracy levels.

Chapter 5 contributes to the age-heaping methodology itself. A reformulated Whipple index, respectively ABCC index, is presented allowing for assessing the special heaping behaviour of young adolescents at the age from 17 to 22. Young adolescents tend to round their age to even numbers, which are 16, 18, 20, and 22, whereas the traditional Whipple and ABCC indices capture the heaping behaviour of adults of the age 23 and older, which is based on multiples of five. This chapter presents graphical and analytical analyses which indicate a high reliability of this new index. Thus, this new index allows extending existing age-heaping series by an additional age group, namely the 17- to 22-year-olds. Furthermore, in this chapter it is shown that when data sources provide only information on young adults and not on older age groups, it is possible to estimate the average heaping behaviour of the older population on the basis of the heaping level of adolescents. The thesis concludes with Chapter 6, which summarizes the main findings of the different studies presented in this thesis.