Educational Equity Predicts Democracy More Reliably Than Wealth Across Two Centuries
Executive Summary
Problem: Modernization theory (Lipset 1959) identifies wealth, industrialization, education, and urbanization as the key drivers of democracy. Wealth has dominated this conversation, but from an anthropological perspective the relationship is more complicated – economic growth drives social stratification and inequality, which can marginalize citizens and undermine democratic participation rather than support it. Whether education, not wealth, is the more reliable predictor of democratic stability is underexplored in longitudinal cross-national data.
Approach: I used the V-Dem dataset to examine the relationship between educational equity (average years of education and educational inequality among citizens 15+) and participatory democracy across two centuries and six world regions. Comparative scatterplots centered on the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries capture the education–democracy relationship at two historical moments. A time series plot contrasting four nations with different wealth metrics (USA, Germany, Mexico, Brazil) visualizes whether wealth buffers democratic decline.
Insights: Educational equity is a stronger and more consistent predictor of participatory democracy than wealth. The wealthiest nations in the dataset show democratic decline in recent decades coinciding with rising educational inequality and the global rise of populism – wealth did not buffer these declines. Policy aimed at strengthening democracy should prioritize equitable access to education, not economic growth alone. The relationship between education and democracy is well-documented: educated citizens are more likely to participate in civic life, hold governments accountable, and resist authoritarian appeals.
Significance: The finding that wealth is insufficient to protect democracy has direct implications for international development policy and foreign aid strategy. If democratic stability is the goal, investments in educational equity – particularly for marginalized groups – are more likely to produce durable democratic outcomes than GDP-focused development models.
Key Findings
- Countries with greater educational equality have higher participatory democracy scores across both the 19th and 20th century snapshots
- Outlier cases (Spain, Japan, Barbados circa 1900; Afghanistan, Somalia circa 2000) reflect documented periods of political upheaval and gender-based educational exclusion, reinforcing rather than undermining the education–democracy relationship
- A highlight of four countries shows a common post-WWII rise in participatory democracy followed by recent declines coinciding with COVID-19, populism, and far-right political consolidation – wealth provided no buffer
- African countries have the highest educational inequality and the lowest participatory democracy scores while the Middle East has the lowest scores on participatory democracy.
Research Question
Does educational equity predict participatory democracy more reliably than wealth across world regions?
Research Answers
Educational Inequality and Democracy: A Consistent Inverse Relationship
Scatterplots centered on 1895–1905 and 1995–2005 both show a clear inverse relationship between educational inequality and participatory democracy: as educational inequality increases, participatory democracy scores decrease. The relationship is more stable in the 19th century snapshot, where the loess (or moving average) trend line is close to linear. The 20th century snapshot shows more variance, reflecting greater regional heterogeneity in how education and democracy co-evolved across the globe.
Figure 1. Education inequality and participatory democracy, 1895–1905. Dashed line indicates mean democracy score.
At the turn of the 19th century, Spain, Japan, and Barbados exhibit relatively low educational inequality scores. Each was experiencing acute political turmoil – Spain’s monarchist restoration following a succession of wars, Japan’s contest for control over Korea, and Barbados’s post-emancipation transition following a rebellion of enslaved peoples. Each may counter the overall relationship between education and democracy but each is a specific case where documented political disruption temporarily decoupled educational access from democratic participation.
Figure 2. Education inequality and participatory democracy, 1995–2005. Dashed line indicates period mean democracy score.
Interpretation: The inverse relationship between educational inequality and participatory democracy is robust and consistent across historical periods. Deviations from the trend are explained by known political disruptions, which themselves often involved suppression of educational access.
Outlier Cases Illuminate the Mechanisms
At the turn of the 20th century, three sub-Saharan African countries (Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali) show higher participatory democracy scores than their low educational equality values would predict – suggesting that other democratizing forces can partially compensate for educational disadvantage. At the other extreme, Afghanistan and Somalia show the lowest participatory democracy scores alongside the lowest educational equality, driven substantially by gender-based educational exclusion. In Somalia, male literacy is approximately twice female literacy. In Afghanistan, 28.4% of women are married before age 18, and Taliban rule has since imposed severe restrictions on women’s access to education and political life.
The regional pattern in the 2000–2022 bar chart summary is stark: the West records the highest average years of education and the lowest educational inequality alongside the strongest participatory democracy scores. Africa records the inverse across all three variables. The Middle East records the lowest participatory democracy scores in the dataset.
Interpretation: The education–democracy relationship is complex. The outlier cases point to specific mechanisms – gender-based exclusion, political violence, and legal discrimination – that suppress both educational equity and democratic participation simultaneously, while other data for smaller countries in Africa suggest a small buffering effect from other variables. The data indicate that durable change is likely not possible without addressing educational parity.
Wealth Does Not Buffer Democratic Decline
Taking the richest countries from regions in the Americas and the EU – USA, Germany, Mexico, and Brazil – tests the claim that wealth drives and sustains democracy. All four show a common trajectory: a rapid post-WWII rise in participatory democracy followed by recent decline. The declines coincide with the COVID-19 pandemic, the global rise of populism, and the consolidation of far-right political parties. Wealth did not protect any of these countries from democratic backsliding.
Figure 3. Participatory democracy index over time for four affluent countries. Black trend line is loess smoothed across all four countries.
Within the affluent Latin American group, Chile ranks among the wealthiest countries in the region and is often cited as evidence for wealth promoting democracy. Uruguay, which is not comparably wealthy, shows similarly strong democratic indicators – attributable in large part to legislated anti-discrimination protections and near-parity in female and male literacy rates and pension access. The comparison undercuts a simple wealth-drives-democracy narrative.
Interpretation: Wealth is a correlate of democracy in cross-sectional snapshots but not a reliable buffer against democratic decline over time. Educational equity – and the legal and institutional structures that produce it – appears to be the more durable predictor.
Regional Patterns: Education and Democracy Since 2000
Bar charts summarizing regional means since 2000 show that the three key variables – participatory democracy, educational inequality, and average years of education – align in a consistent pattern across regions.
Figure 4. Participatory democracy by region, 2000–2022.
Figure 5. Education inequality by region, 2000–2022.
Figure 6. Average years of education (population 15+) by region, 2000–2022.
Interpretation: The three regional bar charts tell a consistent story – the West leads on all three variables (highest education years, lowest inequality, strongest democracy) while Africa shows the inverse. The Middle East records the lowest participatory democracy scores despite moderate education levels, suggesting that educational equity alone is insufficient without accompanying legal and institutional protections for political participation.
Study Design
Data Source: V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) dataset, accessed via the vdemdata R package. Cross-national longitudinal data covering the 19th and 20th centuries across six world regions: Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Africa, the West, and Asia.
Data Handling: Three variables of interest extracted: participatory democracy index (v2x_partipdem, scale 0–1), average years of education for citizens 15+ (e_peaveduc, interpolated for missing values), and educational inequality for citizens 15+ (e_peedgini). Context variables: country, year, region (recoded from numeric to named categories), and population. For scatterplot analysis, data were filtered to 1895–1905 and 1995–2005 and summarized by country mean within each window. For the time series, data were filtered to four countries: USA, Germany, Mexico, Brazil. For bar charts, data from 2000 onward were grouped by region and summarized by mean.
Analytical Approach:
- Extracted and recoded V-Dem variables; region recoded from six-level numeric to named categories
- Computed country-level means for two 10-year windows (1895–1905, 1995–2005) and plotted educational inequality against participatory democracy using loess smoothing; annotated with period mean democracy score
- Identified and interpreted outlier cases using historical and UN Women country data
- Filtered to four affluent countries (USA, Germany, Mexico, Brazil) and plotted participatory democracy over time with loess trend line overlay
- Summarized regional means since 2000 and visualized as bar charts for participatory democracy, educational inequality, and average years of education
Project Resources
Repository: github.com/kchoover14/education-drives-democracy
Data: V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) dataset accessed via the vdemdata R package – freely available, no download required.
Code: - education-drives-democracy.R – full analysis script: data extraction, scatterplots, time series, bar charts
Project Artifacts: - Figures (n=3 static, n=3 interactive HTML)
Environment: - renv.lock and renv/ – restore package environment with renv::restore()
License: - Code and scripts © Kara C. Hoover, licensed under the MIT License. - Data, figures, and written content © Kara C. Hoover, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Tools & Technologies
Languages: R
Tools: RStudio | GitHub
Packages: vdemdata | dplyr | ggplot2 | plotly | forcats | htmlwidgets | scales
Expertise
Domain Expertise: modernization theory | democratization | political economy | educational equity | cross-national longitudinal analysis | V-Dem data | policy analysis
Transferable Expertise: This project demonstrates the ability to interrogate received wisdom in policy-relevant domains – identifying where a dominant explanatory variable (wealth) breaks down and surfacing a more robust predictor (educational equity) with direct implications for how development funding and democracy-support programs should be targeted.