"Railways and Literacy in 19th Century Italy" by Georgios Tsiachtsiras

Descrizione

This paper examines how railroad expansion shaped literacy development in post-unification Italy between 1881 and 1911. Using newly digitized district-level data on literacy rates and the historical evolution of the rail network, we build a synthetic panel of cohorts to estimate the effects of rail access on educational outcomes. Fixed-effects models and an instrumental variables strategy based on the permutation method of Borusyak and Hull (2023) address endogeneity in railroad placement and timing. Results show that longer exposure to railroads significantly increased literacy: a one standard deviation rise in exposure led to a 0.27 standard deviation improvement in log literacy rates, with stronger effects for males and in southern Italy. These findings suggest that rail connectivity fostered access to education and human capital formation in previously disadvantaged regions, with enrollment rates and local industrial activity emerging as potential mechanisms.