Universal Journal of Educational Research 7(11): 2425-2431, 2019 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2019.071120 The Effect of Education on Democracy: Panel Data Analysis of High Income Countries Çiğdem Karış 1,* , Dilek Tandoğan 2 1 Vakfıkebir Vocational School, Trabzon University, Trabzon, Turkey 2 Vocational school of Tourism and Hospitality, Trabzon University, Trabzon, Turkey Received September 17, 2019; Revised October 4, 2019; Accepted October 14, 2019 Copyright©2019 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract The aim of this study is to determine the effect of education on democracy. Regions having developed democracy are the centers of attraction that individuals prefer to live in. From this point of view, the whole society’s benefitting from individual freedom and equality, which are the basic building blocks of democracy, are closely related to the existence of educated individuals who make up that democratic society. Therefore, it can be stated that societies with a high level of education are of a high level of democracy. For this purpose, panel data method was used to measure the effect of education on democracy for high income country group in the period of 1990 and 2015 and the effect of education on democracy was investigated. According to the findings, it was found out that education had a positive effect on democracy. Since the selected country group has a high level of education, the finding reveals the importance of educated individuals for advanced democracy. Therefore, the result of this study supports the view that one of the factors that have a high level of development in high-income countries compared to other advanced democratic also contributes to this study. Keywords Education, Democracy, Panel Regression JEL Classification: C23, I25 1. Introduction Democracy is an understanding of governance that facilitates living together for individuals and is preferred in today’s world, along with its fundamental concepts such as supremacy of law, legal equality, personal freedoms, power to change the governance, right to elect and be elected and property rights. In modern societies, individuals do not want to confront any problems in expressing themselves and choosing freely. Thus, regions having a developed democracy are becoming the center of attraction for individuals to live nowadays. Acemoglu and Robinson (2013) in their studies aiming to determine the reasons for these differences in countries that are close to each other in terms of geography or culture and whose living conditions are different from each other attribute these differences to the processes of democracy between these countries. For instance, they related the causes of difference to the process of democratization in the regions having quite high levels of income inequality despite being very similar in terms of geography, culture and climate, such as South America and North America or North Korea and South Korea. Compared to exploitative institutions, inclusive institutions have contributed prominently to the income level and living conditions of the societies they are included in, with an understanding of governance established on a democratic basis and based on the principles of justice, law and equality. Therefore, it is important to determine the impact of developed democracy processes among the reasons that are ahead when developed countries are compared in terms of income differences with countries with low democracy. Because this information can make a positive contribution to countries in their efforts to increase their welfare. From this point of view, the importance of identifying the factors causing advanced democracy becomes clear. In this context, it is important to have educated individuals who can make effective decisions in order to correctly perceive and operate these advantages of democracy. As a matter of fact, the functioning of democracy depends on the right decisions to be taken and thus necessitates the existence of educated individuals. Nonetheless, the presence of educated individuals who can make efficient decisions for these supremacies, which are included in democracy, to be perceived and function in a correct way is very important. It depends on the right decisions to be taken and thus, requires the presence of