Globalization and Educational Inequality in Long-Run Development during the 17 th to 20 th Centuries : Latin America in Global Comparison

We explore inequality of numeracy and education by studying school years and numeracy of rich and poor, as well as tall and short individuals. To estimate numeracy, we are using the age heaping method for the 17 to early 20 century. Testing the hypothesis that globalization might have increased inequality of education, we find evidence that 19 century globalization actually had inequality effects in Latin America, but 20 century globalization had positive effects by reducing educational inequality in a broader sample of Developing Countries. Moreover, we find strong evidence for Kuznets’ Inverted U hypothesis, with rising educational inequality with GDP per capita in the period until 1913, and the opposite after 1945.