Quasi-experimental evidence on the political impacts of education in Vietnam

This paper estimates the causal effects of education on political concern and political participation in Vietnam by employing the 1991 compulsory schooling reform to instrument for plausibly exogenous changes in education. The paper finds that, in general, education does cause favorable impacts on political outcomes. In particular, one more year of schooling, on average, results in increases in the probabilities of political concern and political participation by about 6–12 percentage points and 6–8 percentage points, respectively. This paper significantly provides suggestive evidence on the role of education in explaining political behaviors using the developing country context.