Can Land Inequality Negatively Affect Human Capital? The American Case, 1950–1970

The present chapter analyzes land inequality's role in expanding mass literacy between North and South America. According to the central claims, countries with low land inequality, organized in family farms linked to commercial elites, such as the United States, have consistently shown higher literacy levels than latifundia countries with high land inequality and landed elites, such as Latin American countries, where literacy has tended to be blocked. To analyze this hypothesis, a new and original database of landginis, large holding ratio, and illiteracy rates has been calculated from the original censuses of each country, offering the most extensive collection of data on land inequality and literacy for America in this period. By employing panel ordinary least squares, fixed and random effects approach, it is found that, historically, countries with higher land inequality and latifundia systems had worse literacy levels. Nevertheless, not all Latin American countries had latifundia systems, high land inequality, and high illiteracy. Furthermore, in the United States, some states had higher levels of land inequality and illiteracy than some Latin American regions. Moreover, the results suggest that land inequality accentuated illiteracy more among adults than younger ones. Land inequality acted as a barrier to literacy.