Ownership Structure and Literacy: Evidence Across Spanish Districts in Late 19th Century

Abstract

This paper studies the association between ownership structure andliteracy across Spanish districts in the late 19th century. We nd a positivecorrelation between the ownership rate of the type of livestock mostly used inagriculture (i.e. cattle) and the literacy rate, which is robust to controlling for alarge set of factors including spatial correlation. We observe a similar associationalso for the second type of livestock mostly used in agriculture (i.e. mules). Thisresult suggests that the structure of livestock ownership, which is used as a proxyfor land ownership, played a role in shaping literacy rates. We use a province-levelanalysis to assess the importance of demand and supply channels in determiningthis correlation.