Using a movers design I find that on average moving to a one standard deviation better location at birth increases a child’s probability of completing primary school by 15 percentage points in Benin, Cameroon, and Mali. Place matters more for girls than boys and is correlated with local characteristics such as urbanization, access to electricity, and employment in agriculture. Religion is weakly correlated with average causal place effects but strongly correlated with the gender gap in the effect place has on educational attainment.
