Non-Financial Hurdles for Human Capital Accumulation: Landownership in Korea under Japanese Rule

This paper suggests that inequality of landownership is a non-financial hurdle for human capital accumulation. It is the first to present evidence that inequality of landownership had an adverse effect on the level of public education in the Korean colonial period. Exploiting variations in inequality in land concentration across regions in Korea and accounting for unobserved heterogeneity across theses regions, using a fixed effect model, the analysis establishes a highly significant adverse effect of land inequality on education in Korea’s colonial period.