The Political Economy of Education on First Nations Reservations: How Natural Resource Abundance and Community Context Influence Educational Attainment

• In Event: Roundtable Session 112
  In Roundtable Session: Community and Its Influence on Education

Abstract

The authors analyze the political and economic determinants of educational attainment across Canadian First Nations reservation communities. Two sets of regression equations are estimated using the community as the unit of analysis. Data is compiled from several sources including Canada’s 2006 Census and INAC community profiles, and includes measures of natural resource endowment and reservation governance. Preliminary results indicate resource abundance is positively correlated with community well-being and strong governance, yet negatively correlated with educational attainment. Inequitable resource endowments may be influencing disparate levels of educational attainment across reservations signaling the importance of quantifying these differences to policy-makers in order to support working-age students who may be induced to exit school pre-maturely for shorter-term natural resource job opportunities.

Authors

• B. Johannes Edinger, Queen's University - Kingston

• Kat Sonia Thomson, Teachers College, Columbia University