Mass Emigration and Human Capital over a Century: Evidence from the Galician Diaspora
Abstract: This article examines the effects of mass emigration on human capital accumulation at origin throughout a century. The context is the Galician diaspora, a massive episode with the equivalent of 60% of the region's 1900 population emigrating to Latin America during 1900-30. I construct a database of all Galician municipalities combining newly-digitized historical data with contemporary census and survey data and exploit two sources of plausibly exogenous variation for identification: pioneer emigration caused by extreme rainfall and changes in economic growth in the main migrant destinations. I find that while emigration depressed literacy rates at origin in the short run, its impact became positive after one decade and led to gains in human capital that still persist one hundred years later. I provide evidence on two novel mechanisms of how emigrants can increase human capital in the long run. Galician emigrants funded associations that financed the construction of schools in their hometowns and diffused norms conducive to a persistent change in beliefs about the value of education.
