Economic Mobility in a Colonial and Postcolonial Economy: Indonesia

Abstract

Despite a consensus about the main factors influencing economic mobility in Indonesia, such as labor-market opportunities and childhood circumstances, virtually nothing is known about how these factors increased economic standing in the colonial and postcolonial periods. The use of height data as a proxy for people’s economic situation, however, finds that whereas ethnicity was a strong predictor of economic status before Indonesia’s Independence, education assumed that role after 1946.