Wealth and the origins of the education take-off

What role does wealth play in shaping educational choices? While theoretical frameworks generate elaborate, testable predictions, there are significant hurdles in empirically assessing this relationship. In modern societies, compulsory education laws conceal the impact of wealth on educational decisions. To address this challenge, we draw on a unique dataset from 1858 that records municipal-level wealth shares alongside primary school enrollment across Sicily, an ideal historical setting in which schools were present in nearly every municipality, yet attendance was voluntary. Leveraging the long-term effects of historical earthquakes on land and property distribution-effects that reshaped the wealth structure of Sicilian municipalities in the mid-19th century, we examine the impact of wealth on schooling decisions. Our analysis shows that wealth played a significant role in educational outcomes even in a largely agrarian context: a 10% increase in the share of wealthy households was associated with a 0.6% increase in primary school enrollment.