Does Schooling Promote Democracy

Source: The Economist

Sometimes it is better to look at the scatter plot than the regression line. It looks to me as if there may be little advantage of a year of schooling, that there is a relatively strong correlation of democracy and schooling over the six to nine years of education range, and that there may be decreasing returns to education with respect to democracy for more than nine or ten years of schooling on average.

Of course, correlation is not causation. It may be that increased freedom leads to more education, or that an underlying variable promotes both schooling and democracy (as measured by Freedom House).

I note too that there is a lot of variance around the regression line.

I also recall that the German Nazis and the Chinese Communists worked to see that the schooling in Germany and China did not promote democracy, but rather supported their authoritarian regimes.