Ancestral Ways of Life and Human Capital Formation in Kenya Data and Programs

There is a rich literature on the importance of historical agriculture as long-term shaper of culture, institutions, and economic development. How much this changes over time, however, we understand much less. In Kenya, we compare the educational attainment between individuals with nomadic and non-nomadic ancestors over time and find a large and quite persistent gap in all periods that we examine (2006, 2009, 2013, 2016) as well as in different age cohorts. We find an especially large gap for individuals with nomadic ancestors who live in rural areas and who are women. In urban areas, we also do find evidence for some, recent improvement, but only when we restrict the comparison group to individuals from other non-English and non-Swahili speaking ethnicities.