Protestants and Catholics and Educational Investment in Guatemala Protestants and Catholics and Educational Investment in Guatemala
Protestants and Catholics and Educational Investment in Guatemala Protestants and Catholics and Educational Investment in Guatemala Rachel M. McCleary and Robert J. Barro Harvard University April 2017 Abstract Recent empirical research on the relation of religion to human capital has focused on the distinction between Mainline Protestantism and Catholicism. Our research emphasizes differential investment in education across types of Protestantism. We apply this framework to Guatemala, a country that was historically dominated by Catholicism but has moved in recent decades toward Protestantism. Our research was motivated by theological differences between Mainline Protestant denominations and premillennialist movements (Evangelical, Pentecostal) that arose at the end of the nineteenth century. These denominations placed less emphasis than Mainline Protestants on investment in education. Consistent with this perspective, literacy is enhanced more by Mainline Protestant schools then by Other Protestant schools. Catholic schools have the weakest relation with literacy, likely because the ouster of Catholic orders and schools in the liberal reforms of the 1870s had a lasting influence. 1 I. Introduction Beginning in the early nineteenth century, British and U.S. Protestant missions invested worldwide in traditional forms of human capital, namely education and healthcare. Recent empirical studies comparing Protestant with Catholic missions in Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Oceania, and Africa support this assessment (Grier [1997], Woodberry and Shah [2004], Woodberry [2009, 2012], Nunn [2014], and Bai and Kung [2012]). These studies are part of a broader discussion of the Protestant Reformation (1517-1555) and its long-term effects on literacy and mass education in Europe (Becker and Wöessmann [2009], Schaltegger and Torgler [2009], Becker, Hornung, and Wöessmann [2011], Boppart, et al.
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