The Long-Run and Gender-Equalizing Impacts of School Access : Evidence from the First Indochina War

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 (1946-1954). 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. Although we cannot reject the null hypothesis of equal impacts at standard significance levels, when estimated separately, the impacts are statistically significant for school-age girls and not for school-age boys. We discuss various robustness checks and extensions that support these findings