The Last or Lasting Samurai? The Impact of Secondary Schools on Elite Formation in Early Development

Abstract

We investigate the long-run impact of secondary education on occupational and upward intergenerational mobility in late 19th century Japan - a few decades after the Meiji Restoration (1869) when the country rapidly and peacefully transitioned from a feudal hereditary society to a modern meritocratic society. The enrollment rate in post-elementary education was still low but increasing due to rapid construction of secondary schools across regions. Using cohort-specific discontinuities in access to the newly established neighborhood schools, we examine how improved access to secondary schools altered the chances of reaching leadership positions in private and public sectors for individuals with different family backgrounds, particularly former samurai (who used to inherit public sector occupations) and commoners (who used to inherit private sector occupations). We find that the expansion of secondary education increased elites from both samurai and commoner families, but most of these new elites chose the occupations that their families used to inherit. Within each group of commoners and samurai families, however, the new elites mainly came from non-elite fathers.