Coffee tastes bitter: education and the coffee economy in Colombia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This article examines the impact of coffee production on the demand for primary education in Colombia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using newly compiled municipal-level data and employing instrumental variable and panel regression methods, the study finds that increased coffee cultivation—an agrarian commodity produced mainly by smallholders and reliant on intensive family labor including children—significantly reduced school enrollment rates among children aged 7 to 14. The research highlights that child labor in coffee-growing areas was structurally important, as poverty and the labor-intensive nature of coffee harvesting created high opportunity costs for schooling. While coffee production enhanced educational supply through increased local revenues, its demand-side effects depressed educational outcomes, a dynamic not explained by land concentration or other agrarian activities. The findings underscore the need to consider both supply and demand factors when analyzing educational inequalities in agrarian commodity-based economies.