The long-run and gender-equalizing impacts of school access : evidence from the First Indochina War

Very few studies currently exist on the long-term impacts of schooling policies in developing countries. We examine the impacts-half a century later-of a mass education program conducted by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the occupied areas during the First Indochina War. Difference-in-difference estimation results suggest that school-age children who were exposed to the program obtained significantly higher levels of education than their peers who were residing in French-occupied areas. The impacts are statistically significant for school-age girls and not for school-age boys. We find beneficial spillover and inter-generational impacts of education: affected girls enjoyed higher household living standards, had more educated spouses, and raised more educated children. We discuss various robustness checks and extensions that support these findings.