This article delves into the relationship between newspaper readership and civic attitudes, and its e↵ect on economic development. To this end, we investigate the long-term consequences of the introduction of the printing press in the 19th century. In sub-Saharan Africa, Protestant missionaries were the first both to import the printing press technology and to allow the indigenous population to use it. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant missions in 1903. This dataset includes, for each mission station, the geographic location and its characteristics, as well as the educational and health-related investments undertaken by the mission. We show that, within regions located close to missions, proximity to a printing press significantly increases newspaper readership today. We also document a strong association between proximity to a printing press and contemporary economic development. Our results are robust to a variety of identification strategies.
Can early capital transfers durably affect the course of development? In sub-Saharan Africa, Protestant missionaries were the first to both import the printing press technology and allow the natives to use it. We build a novel geocoded dataset locating protestant missions in 1903. This dataset includes, for each mission station, the amount and nature of the investments conducted prior to 1903 as well as geographic characteristics. We find that proximity to an historical missionary settlement endowed with a printing press significantly increases newspaper readership today within regions located close to historical mission settlements. This result is robust to a variety of identification strategies striving against potential endogenous selection of missions into printing. Newspaper readership has important consequences for political participation nowadays. Using distance to the location of the printing press as an instrument for the impact of newspaper readership on political participation, we find that newspaper readership significantly increases political participation at the community level and has no effect on participation at a larger (national) level.
This paper investigates the long-term impact of historical missionary activity on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. On the one hand, missionaries were the first to invest in modern medicine in the region. On the other hand, Christianity influenced sexual beliefs and behaviors that affect the risk of contagion. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant and Catholic missions in the early 20th century, as well as the health facilities they invested in, that we combine with individual-level Demographic and Health Survey data. With these data, we can address separately these two channels, within regions close to historical missionary settlements. First, we show that proximity to historical missionary health facilities decreases the likelihood of HIV; persistence in healthcare provision and safer sexual behaviors in the region explain this result. Second, we show that regions close to historical missionary settlements exhibit higher likelihood of HIV. This effect is driven by the Christian population in our sample. This suggests conversion to Christianity as a possible explanatory channel. Our findings are robust to alternative specifications addressing selection.
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