Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-pvkqz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-31T07:01:16.214Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Were Jews in interwar Poland more educated?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2020

Ran Abramitzky  and
Hanna Halaburda
Ran Abramitzky*
Affiliation:
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA NBER, Cambridge, MA, USA
Hanna Halaburda
Affiliation:
NYU Stern School of Business, New York, NY, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: ranabr@stanford.edu
Get access

Abstract

In the context of interwar Poland, we find that Jews tended to be more literate than non-Jews, but show that this finding is driven by a composition effect. In particular, most Jews lived in cities and most non-Jews lived in rural areas, and people in cities were more educated than people in villages regardless of their religion. The case of interwar Poland illustrates that the Jewish relative education advantage depends on the historical and institutional contexts.

Keywords

EducationInterwar PolandJews

Information

Type
Research Papers
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 86 , Special Issue 3: The Economics of Religion , September 2020 , pp. 291 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

First version: 2005.

References

Becker, Sascha and Cinnirella, Francesco (2020) Prussia Disaggregated: The Demography of its Universe of Localities in 1871, working paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botticini, Maristella and Eckstein, Zvi (2005) Jewish occupational selection: education, restrictions, or minorities?. Journal of Economic History 65(4), 922–948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botticini, Maristella and Eckstein, Zvi (2007) From farmers to merchants, conversions and diaspora: human capital and Jewish history. Journal of the European Economic Association 5(5), 885–926.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botticini, Maristella and Eckstein, Zvi (2014) The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, pp. 70–1492. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brenner, Reuven, and Kiefer, Nicholas M. (1981) The economics of the diaspora: discrimination and occupational structure. Economic Development and Cultural Change 29(3), 517–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronsztejn, Szyja (1963) Ludność żydowska w Polsce w okresie miedzywojennym. Studium statystyczne, Ossolineum.Google Scholar
Corrsin, Stephen (1998) Literacy rates and questions of language, faith and ethnic identity in population censuses in the partitioned polish lands and interwar Poland (1880s–1930s). The Polish Review 43(2), 131–160.Google Scholar
Corrsin, Stephen (1999) The city of illiterates? Levels of literacy among Poles and Jews in Warsaw, 1882–1914. Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 12, 221–241.Google Scholar
Davies, Norman (1986) Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dłuska, Teresa and Holzer, Jerzy (1958) Doświadczenia powszechnych spisów ludności Polski w zakresie cech demograficznych. Wiadomosci Statystyczne III(3), 1–7.Google Scholar
Eliezer, Ayal and Chiswick, Barry (1983) The economics of the diaspora revisited. Economic Development and Cultural Change 31(4), 861–875.Google Scholar
Hundert, Gershon David, ed. (2008) The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kuznets, Simon, and Finkelstein, Louis (1960) The economic life and structure of the Jews. In Louis Finkelstein, (ed.), The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion. NY: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
Landau, Zbigniew and Tomaszewski, Jerzy (1971) Zarys historii gospodarczej Polski 1918–1939. Ksiażka i Wiedza.Google Scholar
Maly rocznik statystyczny (1930–39). Warsaw, Poland: GUS (Glowny Urzad Statystyczny).Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, Ezra (1987) The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Perlmann, Joel (1997) Literacy Among Jews of Russia in 1897: A Reanalysis of Census Data, Levy Economics Institute Working Paper No. 182.Google Scholar
Rocznik statystyczny (1922–29). Warsaw, Poland: GUS (Glowny Urzad Statystyczny).Google Scholar
Rothschild, Joseph (1974) East Central Europe between the Two World Wars. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Spitzer, Yannay (2019) Pale in Comparison Jews as a Rural Service Minority, Working paper.Google Scholar
Stampfer, Shaul (1987) Literacy among East European Jews in the modern era: context, sources and Implications (in Hebrew). In Shmuel, Almog (ed.), Transition and Change in Modern Jewish History: Essays Presented in Honor of Shmuel Ettinger. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, pp. 457–483.Google Scholar
Statystyka Polski (1938) seria C, zeszyt 94d. Warsaw, Poland: GUS (Glowny Urzad Statystyczny).Google Scholar
Tomaszewski, Jerzy (1985) Ojczyzna nie tylko Polaków. Mniejszości narodowe w Polsce w latach 1918–1939, Młodzieżowa Agencja Wydawnicza.Google Scholar