Economic development, education, and terrorism: A quantitative analysis

Abstract

Quantitative cross-national tests using negative binomial regression confirm the existence of a curvilinear relationship between the amount of people receiving an education and the level of terrorist activity in certain countries. In countries with the lowest level of educational modernization, the growth of education is accompanied by a significant trend towards an increase in the intensity of terrorist activities, and this trend turns out to be significant after being controlled for economic development level, type of political regime, unemployment, economic inequality and urbanization. At the same time, a pronounced extreme has been detected given a relatively low but not completely absent quantitative development level of national education systems (corresponding to 3–6 years of schooling on average). In more socio-economically developed countries, a further increase in the years people on average spend receiving education is accompanied by a significant trend towards a decrease in the level of terrorist activity. This trend also turns out to be significant when controlling for economic development level, type of political regime, unemployment, economic inequality and urbanization. The sharpest decline corresponds to the range of 7–8 years spent on average receiving education. On the one hand, the conducted quantitative analysis allows us to make an optimistic conclusion, in that a further increase in the years people on average spend receiving education – together with further economic development of the middle and high income countries – can indeed become one of the factors which will lead to a decrease in the level of terrorist activity in these countries. The analysis also shows that, for further reduction of the level of terrorist activity (in addition to the growth of the level of education), a decrease in the level of unemployment, economic inequality, the spread of consolidated democratic political regimes and the reduction of the amount of factional conflict partial democracies can also play a significant role. At the same time, the growth of economic inequality and the level of unemployment, the rejection of change in the world by traditionalist members of the population – all of this may become the cause for an increase in the level of terrorist violence in first world countries.