Edward Miguel (University of California, Berkeley)
Abstract
The impact of ethnic diversity on the provision of local public goods and collective action in Africa remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, this paper explores the relationship between ethnic diversity and local primary school funding in rural western Kenya. The econometric identification strategy relies on the stable, historically determined patterns of ethnic land settlement in western Kenya. The main empirical result is that higher levels of local ethnic diversity is associated with sharply lower primary school funding and worse school facilities in western Kenya. The theory examines school choice and funding decisions when pupil mobility among schools is limited by land market imperfections and ethnic divisions, the relevant case for rural Africa, and predicts that local pupil transfers may lead to upward bias in OLS estimates of the impact of ethnic diversity. This theoretical prediction is confirmed in the data.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series HEW with number
0012001.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)