Rural school access and the agricultural transformation
利用墨西哥南部中学建设的时空差异，发现学校建设使学龄儿童预期教育增加约4年，18-22岁非农工作占比提高29.8个百分点，但土著语言家庭的效果较小，表明农村学校建设可加速经济转型但存在异质性。
Abstract Improving children's access to primary and secondary education is a strategic goal for many global development agencies and government policymakers. Nevertheless, there is relatively little research examining how changes in rural school supply affect future labor markets. We leverage variation in the timing and location of secondary school construction in Southern Mexico to identify the effects of school supply on labor outcomes. We find that school construction increases expected education for school‐aged children by about 4 years and raises the share of years working in the nonagricultural sector between the ages of 18–22 by 29.8 percentage points. The magnitude of the effects on share of years doing nonagricultural work is smaller for individuals from homes where an indigenous language is spoken. Our findings indicate that rural school construction in less‐developed countries can accelerate the transformation from agricultural to nonagricultural economies, but there may be heterogeneous effects across socioeconomic groups and ethnicities.