How Does Schooling Under Communism Influence Political Attitudes During the Years of Transition to Democracy? A Difference-in-Differences Analysis Based on a Natural Experiment

The existing literature on the effects of education on political attitudes has not yet reached a theoretical consensus about how formal schooling influences students’ political attitudes in the short run and long run, especially at a time of dramatic changes in a country’s political and economic system. This project exploits the difference-in-differences approach and natural experiment design to examine some recently available data at the individual level on educational, labor market, and attitudinal outcomes from Germany that demonstrate the performance of former residents of the Socialist autocratic German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the market-based democratic Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) within the reunified Germany. In the short term, the Socialist elements of education do not influence the individuals’ final educational attainment but exert negative influences on the later economic outcome in labor market measured by earning per working hour. Counterintuitively, Socialist elements in syllabus and pedagogy under Communism make people more in tune with individualism. Meanwhile, enrollment with political restrictions in the Socialist education system tends to drive people to be more leftist. It is significant to understand the above empirical results and evidence, based on which the nature of Communism is further explored, and thus the government can implement policies to deal with its aftermath