Historical Origins of Inter-Religion Differences: Evidence from 19th and 20th Century Egypt

The proposed dissertation project contributes to the growing literature on the impact of religion on economic outcomes. It explores the differences across religious groups with respect to educational and occupational outcomes employing census data from Egypt, both individual-level data (1848-1868) and village/quarter-level data (1897-1927). The digitization of the (1848-1868) individual-level census records is currently ongoing at the National Archives of Egypt. The empirical evidence from Egypt (1897-1927) that has been obtained to date suggests that Jews and Copts (Egyptian Christians) outdistanced Muslims in terms of literacy and were relatively more concentrated (than Muslims) in manufacturing and commerce. This phenomenon seems to have deep roots in Egyptian Medieval history since at least the Islamic conquest of the thenChristian (mostly Coptic) Egypt (7th century AD). The project suggests a new interpretation of the shift in the educational and occupational distributions of Copts after the Islamic conquest. The theory emphasizes the role of the Islamic tax system (with its poll-tax on Non-Muslims) in the conversion of the poor and uneducated segments of the Coptic population into Islam to avoid paying the tax. The theory also emphasizes the geographical pattern of Arab immigration and settlement and the role it played in explaining the subsequent spatial variation in the enforcement of the poll-tax. It is argued that such variation in the enforcement of the poll-tax, in turn, might have shaped the currently “observed” spatial distribution of Copts as well as the spatial variation in the Coptic-Muslim educational and occupational differences. This hypothesis is then used to identify the causal impact of being a Copt on literacy and occupation.