IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/exehis/v50y2013i2p267-284.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequality and school funding in the rural United States, 1890

Author

Listed:
  • Vollrath, Dietrich

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship of inequality to school funding in counties of the U.S. in 1890. Inequality, measured here on the basis of farm-size distributions, is found to be negatively related to local school property tax revenues across the whole sample of 1345 rural counties. However, further analysis shows that this relationship is not consistent across the sample. In the North, there is a significant negative relationship between inequality and school funding, and this relationship is shown to be consistent with the fact that assessed values of property did not rise linearly with wealth. Across the South, there is no distinct relationship between inequality and school funding. The results also indicate that inequality in the South cannot directly explain the gap in school funding with the North, in the sense that redistributing farms in the South to match the Northern distributions leads to no predicted increase in school funding.

Suggested Citation

  • Vollrath, Dietrich, 2013. "Inequality and school funding in the rural United States, 1890," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 267-284.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:50:y:2013:i:2:p:267-284
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2012.11.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498312000812
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eeh.2012.11.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Joseph Wallis, 2000. "American Government Finance in the Long Run: 1790 to 1990," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 61-82, Winter.
    2. repec:reg:rpubli:274 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Deininger, Klaus & Squire, Lyn, 1998. "New ways of looking at old issues: inequality and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 259-287.
    4. Saint-Paul, Gilles & Verdier, Thierry, 1993. "Education, democracy and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 399-407, December.
    5. Goldin, Claudia, 1998. "America's Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(2), pages 345-374, June.
    6. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    7. David M. Cutler & Ellen Meara, 1998. "The Medical Costs of the Young and Old: A Forty-Year Perspective," NBER Chapters, in: Frontiers in the Economics of Aging, pages 215-246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Roland Benabou, 2000. "Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 96-129, March.
    9. Wallis, John Joseph, 2003. "The property tax as a coordinating device: Financing Indiana's Mammoth Internal Improvement System, 1835-1842," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 223-250, July.
    10. Mulligan, Casey B. & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "Population and Regulation," Working Papers 190, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    11. Stoddard, Christiana, 2009. "Why did Education Become Publicly Funded? Evidence from the Nineteenth-Century Growth of Public Primary Schooling in the United States," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(1), pages 172-201, March.
    12. Burgess, Robin & Stern, Nicholas, 1993. "Taxation and Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 762-830, June.
    13. Oded Galor & Omer Moav & Dietrich Vollrath, 2009. "Inequality in Landownership, the Emergence of Human-Capital Promoting Institutions, and the Great Divergence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 143-179.
    14. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1994. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 600-621, June.
    15. Wallis, John Joseph, 2005. "Constitutions, Corporations, and Corruption: American States and Constitutional Change, 1842 to 1852," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(1), pages 211-256, March.
    16. Fernandez, Raquel & Rogerson, Richard, 1998. "Public Education and Income Distribution: A Dynamic Quantitative Evaluation of Education-Finance Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 813-833, September.
    17. Goldin, Claudia, 2001. "The Human-Capital Century And American Leadership: Virtues Of The Past," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(2), pages 263-292, June.
    18. Glomm, Gerhard & Ravikumar, B, 1992. "Public versus Private Investment in Human Capital Endogenous Growth and Income Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(4), pages 818-834, August.
    19. Einhorn, Robin L., 2006. "American Taxation, American Slavery," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226194875, Febrero.
    20. Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2003. "The "Virtues" of the Past: Education in the First Hundred Years of the New Republic," NBER Working Papers 9958, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Go, Sun & Lindert, Peter, 2010. "The Uneven Rise of American Public Schools to 1850," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(1), pages 1-26, March.
    22. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard E, 1996. "Public Provision of Private Goods," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(1), pages 57-84, February.
    23. Einhorn, Robin L., 2001. "Species Of Property: The American Property-Tax Uniformity Clauses Reconsidered," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(4), pages 974-1008, December.
    24. Rodney Ramcharan, 2010. "Inequality and Redistribution: Evidence from U.S. Counties and States, 1890-1930," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 729-744, November.
    25. Kenneth L. Sokoloff & Eric M. Zolt, 2007. "Inequality and the Evolution of Institutions of Taxation: Evidence from the Economic History of the Americas," NBER Chapters, in: The Decline of Latin American Economies: Growth, Institutions, and Crises, pages 83-138, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Martin Fiszbein, 2022. "Agricultural Diversity, Structural Change, and Long-Run Development: Evidence from the United States," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 1-43, April.
    2. Sharp, Paul & Boberg-Fazlic, Nina & Lampe, Markus & Martinelli Lasheras, Pablo, 2020. "Winners and Losers from Enclosure: Evidence from Danish Land Inequality 1682-1895," CEPR Discussion Papers 14616, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Graziella Bertocchi & Arcangelo Dimico, 2017. "De jure and de facto determinants of power: evidence from Mississippi," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 321-345, December.
    4. Bertocchi, Graziella & Dimico, Arcangelo, 2014. "Slavery, education, and inequality," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 197-209.
    5. Jason Poulos, 2019. "State-Building through Public Land Disposal? An Application of Matrix Completion for Counterfactual Prediction," Papers 1903.08028, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.
    6. Tomas Cvrcek & Miroslav Zajicek, 2019. "The rise of public schooling in nineteenth-century Imperial Austria: Who gained and who paid?," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 13(3), pages 367-403, September.
    7. Hoehn-Velasco, Lauren, 2018. "Explaining declines in US rural mortality, 1910–1933: The role of county health departments," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 42-72.
    8. Droller, Federico & Fiszbein, Martin, 2021. "Staple Products, Linkages, and Development: Evidence from Argentina," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(3), pages 723-762, September.
    9. Marco Percoco, 2018. "Wealth inequality, redistribution and local development: The case of land reform in Italy," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(2), pages 181-200, March.
    10. Andersson, Jens & Berger, Thor, 2016. "Elites and the Expansion of Education in 19th-century Sweden," Lund Papers in Economic History 149, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    11. Fabio Braggion & Mintra Dwarkasing & Steven Ongena, 2018. "Household wealth inequality, entrepreneurs’ financial constraints, and the great recession: evidence from the Kauffman Firm Survey," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 533-543, March.
    12. Tommy Krieger, 2022. "Elites and Health Infrastructure Improvements in Industrializing Regimes," CESifo Working Paper Series 9808, CESifo.
    13. Domenico Rossignoli, 2015. "Too many and too much? Special-interest groups and inequality at the turn of the century," Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, vol. 130(3), pages 337-366.
    14. Cvrcek, Tomas & Zajicek, Miroslav, 2019. "The making of a liberal education: Political economy of the Austrian school reform, 1865 – 1880," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 1-1.
    15. Boberg-Fazlić, Nina & Lampe, Markus & Martinelli Lasheras, Pablo & Sharp, Paul, 2022. "Winners and losers from agrarian reform: Evidence from Danish land inequality 1682–1895," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    16. Vitantonio Mariella, 2023. "Landownership concentration and human capital accumulation in post-unification Italy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1695-1764, July.
    17. Martin Fiszbein, 2017. "Agricultural Diversity, Structural Change and Long-run Development: Evidence from the U.S," NBER Working Papers 23183, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vollrath, Dietrich, 2008. "Wealth Distribution and the Provision of Public Goods: Evidence from the United States," MPRA Paper 11534, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Oded, Galor, 2011. "Inequality, Human Capital Formation, and the Process of Development," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & Stephen Machin & Ludger Woessmann (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 441-493, Elsevier.
    3. Gunther Rehme, 2002. "(Re)Distribution of Personal Incomes, Education and Economic Performance Across Countries," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2002-34, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Andrea Ichino & Loukas Karabarbounis & Enrico Moretti, 2011. "The Political Economy Of Intergenerational Income Mobility," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(1), pages 47-69, January.
    5. Graziella Bertocchi, 2011. "The Vanishing Bequest Tax: The Comparative Evolution Of Bequest Taxation In Historical Perspective," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 107-131, March.
    6. Andrew Berg & Jonathan D. Ostry & Charalambos G. Tsangarides & Yorbol Yakhshilikov, 2018. "Redistribution, inequality, and growth: new evidence," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 259-305, September.
    7. Benabou, Roland, 2005. "Inequality, Technology and the Social Contract," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1595-1638, Elsevier.
    8. Oded Galor & Omer Moav & Dietrich Vollrath, 2009. "Inequality in Landownership, the Emergence of Human-Capital Promoting Institutions, and the Great Divergence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 143-179.
    9. Yuki Uchida & Tetsuo Ono, 2020. "Inequality and education choice," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(4), pages 980-1018, August.
    10. Vincenzo Lombardo, 2008. "Income distribution and Growth: A Critical Survey," Working Papers 11_2008, D.E.S. (Department of Economic Studies), University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.
    11. Vitantonio Mariella, 2023. "Landownership concentration and human capital accumulation in post-unification Italy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1695-1764, July.
    12. Cinnirella, Francesco & Hornung, Erik, 2016. "Landownership concentration and the expansion of education," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 135-152.
    13. Tetsuo Ono, 2016. "Inequality and the politics of redistribution," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 23(2), pages 191-217, April.
    14. Gradstein, Mark & Justman, Moshe, 1997. "Democratic Choice of an Education System: Implications for Growth and Income Distribution," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 169-183, July.
    15. Oded Galor, 2009. "Inequality and Economic Development: An Overview," Working Papers 2009-3, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    16. Marrero, Gustavo A. & Rodríguez, Juan G., 2013. "Inequality of opportunity and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 107-122.
    17. Arsham Reisinezhad, 2018. "Economic Growth and Income Inequality in Resource Countries: Theory and Evidence," PSE Working Papers halshs-01707976, HAL.
    18. Jorge Soares, "undated". "Altruism and Self-interest in a Political Economy of Public Education," Working Papers 130, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    19. Erik Hornung, 2012. "Human Capital, Technology Diffusion, and Economic Growth - Evidence from Prussian Census Data," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 46.
    20. Zhang, Lei, 2008. "Political economy of income distribution dynamics," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 119-139, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Land distribution; Inequality; School finance; Property taxes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • N51 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment
    • N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • N41 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:50:y:2013:i:2:p:267-284. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622830 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.