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Educational Choice in the Era Before Free Public Schooling: Evidence from German Immigrant Children in Pennsylvania, 1771–1817

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Farley Grubb
Farley Grubb
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716.
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Abstract

Education clauses in 3,478 immigrant servant contracts are used to measure the incidence of schooling versus informal instruction by location, age, and sex. The proportion of servants receiving education was high, over 20 percent being taught outside of schools. Education expanded between 1770 and 1800 through a net increase in schooling rather than because of a substitution of schooling for informal instruction. In the 1770s formal schooling in rural areas lagged behind that in urban, but achieved parity by 1800. Little difference in education was found based on gender.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 363 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

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