Good Bye Chiang Kai-shek? The Long-Lasting Effects of Education under the Authoritarian Regime in Taiwan
2018/05/01
研討會日期 : 2018-05-01
時間 : 10:30
主講人 : Mr. Yu Bai (白羽)
主持人 : Professor Tzu-Ting Yang
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Mr. Bai is currently a Ph.D student at University of Bologna, Italy. His research fields include Political Economy, Economics of Education and Health Economics.
演講摘要 : Does experiencing an authoritarian regime at an early age have long-lasting effects on people’s political attitudes, voting behavior, and national identity? After Taiwan’s former leader Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law in 1987, Taiwan ended the authoritarian regime and began democratization. During that period, public discontent with the political indoctrination of youth via primary and secondary school textbooks forced the Ministry of Education to remove the major part of the ideological content. Exploiting this historical event, we utilize cut-off birth dates for school enrollment that lead to variation in the length of exposure to the authoritarian education system from 1979 to 1987 within the same birth cohort. Based on around 2800 observations from the Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS), we find that one additional year of exposure to authoritarian education during youth reduces subsequent satisfaction with democracy and political participation, increases the likelihood to support and vote for the KMT party, and drops the probability of self-declared Taiwanese identity rather than Chinese in later life. Our results persist after ruling out alternative interpretations and are robust to the sensitivity tests and different groups definitions.
