What is the relationship between education and military power?

Responsible researcher: Adriano Valladão

Article title : EDUCATION AND MILITARY RIVALRY

Article authors : Philippe Aghion, Xavier Jaravel, Torsten Persson and Dorothee Rouzet

Location of the Intervention : Group of countries

Sample Size : 3,140 observations

Sector : Education

Type of Intervention : Relationship between education and military threat

Variable of Main Interest : Enrollment in primary education

Evaluation method: Experimental Evaluation (RCT)

Policy Problem

What are the reasons that lead countries to carry out mass educational reforms? One of the explanations is its relevance to the military area. Mass education would be important to unify the multiplicity of dialects spoken in the same region, it would promote a set of moral principles and discipline, it would teach basic reading and comprehension skills, in addition to transmitting patriotic values.

Assessment Context

The historical examples of France, Japan and China allow us to illustrate the relationship between education and military spending, in addition to highlighting the role of democracies and autocracies in the process of educational coverage.

France : In 1870, investments in education took place in the private and religious sphere, lagging behind in relation to Prussia and other European countries. After the defeat in the war by Prussia that culminated in the end of the Second Empire, one of the explanations raised was the superiority of Prussian schools and universities. A consensus was formed that the French educational system should be reformed, which happened in the 1880s. The cost of enrollment in public primary schools was reduced to zero, enrollment of children between 6 and 13 years old became mandatory, and more schools and paving to facilitate access. This resulted in an increase in enrollment, literacy jumped from 80% to 96% of the population and a growth in patriotic sentiment.

Japan : Until the mid-19th century, Japan was ruled by shoguns and education was the privilege of samurai. In the mid-1850s, the Western threat to the country's sovereignty catalyzed structural changes resulting in a civil war with insurgents taking control in 1868. The change that occurred in education aimed to modernize Japanese society and was based on values Westerners such as mass schooling as a source of economic and military power. Among the measures were the introduction of a compulsory system of primary education for all children, the increase in the number of schools and the training of teachers. Despite initial resistance to change, which may have been due to the absence of democracy, enrollment in primary education became practically universal and the literacy rate jumped from 35% to 75% and from 8% to 68% for men and women. respectively.

China : In the first half of the 19th century, the Chinese situation was similar to the Japanese one in terms of the military threat of loss of sovereignty to Western nations. Despite recognizing Western technology, weapons and education, there was a notion that radical reform would affect the existing social hierarchy. Therefore, gradual educational reforms were adopted trying to incorporate foreign knowledge through book translation and engineering training in Western countries. A defeat by Japan in 1895 accelerated institutional changes and reforms, Peking University was created with a focus on sciences that would change the current system of standards and plans were made for a national education system. A conservative coup d'état in 1898, however, blocked the ongoing changes, even though they served as the basis for other subsequent reforms.

Intervention Details

The historical contexts of France, Japan, and China illustrate how concerns about military incidents can affect reforms in primary education. The importance of political regimes is also noted, comparing democracies with autocracies in the success of reforms. In practice, to study the relationship between military events and educational reforms in a generalized way, it is necessary to look at the data. Annual information was then collected on 166 countries between 1830 and 2010. Education was measured by the number of enrollments per 10,000 inhabitants, since a threat of war indicated whether the country had been at war in the last 10 years or not. As this measure could end up losing some conflicts, the idea of ​​rivalry was also explored, which captured the risk of an armed conflict, if any country had a rival of relevant size and strength. The information about the political regime came from the Polity IV database, in which each country receives a score each year regarding the competitiveness and openness of the executive. In addition, other relevant elements such as military spending, population size, urbanization rate and GDP were collected.

Methodology Details

With all the information described above, the relationship between military events and mass schooling can be measured. The idea of ​​this exercise is that, by adding all the information relevant to increasing the number of enrollments in a country, the desired relationship is obtained without incorporating the effects of other factors. Given the objective of the investigation, the two parameters of main interest measure the relationship between the number of enrollments in primary education in countries both with the imminence of a war or military tension and the interaction between military rivalry and political regime.

Results

The results indicate that investment in education, measured by the number of enrollments in primary education, has a positive relationship with the military area, either when this is accounted for by participation in war in the last 10 years or when it is measured by rivalry or the imminence of a armed conflict. Furthermore, investment in education is negatively correlated with democracy, but such investment responds more quickly to military threats in democracy.

The reason for investing in education was that a more educated population would have more effective soldiers in a war. To analyze this hypothesis, it is noted from the data that having a military rivalry and a greater number of enrollments in primary education increase the chance of entering and winning a war in the next 10 years. These results corroborate the idea that mass education is related to more effective armies.

Finally, it is noteworthy that military conflicts existed for a long time without any implications for mass education, but the advent of the industrial revolution and the development of weapons technology changed this need. When evaluating the role of industry, we obtain that the dynamic between military spending and education is in fact positive for countries with a minimum level of industrialization. The development of war technology brought about by the industrial revolution suggests a greater importance for educated soldiers, reinforcing the role of acquiring basic skills.

Public Policy Lessons

Mass education and military spending would be positively correlated in teaching soldiers basic skills, promoting group discipline, and/or providing patriotic values. The study teaches that this relationship is in fact positive, that the relationship between democracies and enrollment in primary education is negative, but that education responds more strongly to military threats in democracies. These teachings are valid for modern societies in which the level of industrialization is above a certain threshold. Finally, it should be noted that such correlation should not be seen as causality, just as greater education would generate greater military value, it could be the case that the search for military power encourages greater education.

Reference

Aghion, Philippe; Jaravel, X.; Persson, T.; Rouzet, D. “Education and military rivalry.” Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 376-412, 2019.