The Washington Post featured work by Felipe Valencia, a UBC economist, that showed how returns from education and vocational training span generations and even centuries.
Valencia’s work studied the impact of Jesuit missions founded hundreds of years ago.
“This paper is not saying missions are good,” Valencia said. “This paper is not saying Catholicism is good or didn’t have any negative effects. This paper is saying even though people were converting indigenous people to Catholicism, while they were doing that they were also teaching them skills.”