IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ifs/fistud/v21y2000i3p329-347.html

Expenditure incidence in Africa: microeconomic evidence

Author

Listed:
  • David E. Sahn
  • Stephen D. Younger

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the progressivity of social sector expenditures in eight sub-Saharan African countries. We employ dominance tests, complemented by extended Gini/concentration coefficients, to determine whether health and education expenditures redistribute resources to the poor. We find that social services are poorly targeted. Among the services examined, primary education tends to be most progressive and university education is least progressive. The benefits associated with hospital care are also less progressive than other health facilities. Our results also show that, while concentration curves are a useful way to summarise information on the distributional benefits of government expenditures, statistical testing of differences in curves is important.

Suggested Citation

  • David E. Sahn & Stephen D. Younger, 2000. "Expenditure incidence in Africa: microeconomic evidence," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 21(3), pages 329-347, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:21:y:2000:i:3:p:329-347
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifs.org.uk/fs/articles/0027a.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 1997. "Statistical Inference for the Measurement of the Incidence of Taxes and Transfers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(6), pages 1453-1466, November.
    2. repec:bla:revinw:v:39:y:1993:i:4:p:337-56 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:bla:revinw:v:46:y:2000:i:3:p:309-27 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1983. "On an Extension of the Gini Inequality Index," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 24(3), pages 617-628, October.
    5. repec:imf:imfwpa:1999/172 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jean-Yves Duclos & Martin Tabi, 1999. "Inégalité et redistribution du revenu, avec une application au Canada," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 75(1), pages 95-122.
    2. Ms. Sònia Muñoz & Stanley Sang-Wook Cho, 2003. "Social Impact of a Tax Reform: The Case of Ethiopia," IMF Working Papers 2003/232, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Duclos, Jean-Yves, 1997. "The asymptotic distribution of linear indices of inequality, progressivity and redistribution," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 51-57, January.
    4. Duclos, J.Y. & Tabi, M., 1996. "Linear Inequality Measures and the Redistribution of Income," Papers 9613, Laval - Recherche en Politique Economique.
    5. Shlomo Yitzhaki, 2003. "Gini’s Mean difference: a superior measure of variability for non-normal distributions," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(2), pages 285-316.
    6. Duclos, J.Y. & Jalbert, V. & Araar, A., 2000. "Classical Horizontal Inequity and Reranking: an Integrated Approach," Papers 0002, Laval - Recherche en Politique Economique.
    7. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Jalbert, Vincent & Araar, Abdelkrim, 2003. "Classical Horizontal Inequity and Reranking: an Integrating Approach," Cahiers de recherche 0306, CIRPEE.
    8. Francesca Gastaldi & Paolo Liberati & Elena Pisano & Simone Tedeschi, 2014. "Progressivity-Improving VAT Reforms in Italy," Working papers 6, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    9. Davidson, Russell & Flachaire, Emmanuel, 2007. "Asymptotic and bootstrap inference for inequality and poverty measures," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 141-166, November.
    10. Cowell, Frank & Victoria-Feser, Maria-Pia, 1998. "Statistical inference for Lorenz curves with censored data," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2049, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Robson, Matthew & O’Donnell, Owen & Van Ourti, Tom, 2024. "Aversion to health inequality — Pure, income-related and income-caused," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    12. Ida Camminatiello & Rosaria Lombardo & Mario Musella & Gianmarco Borrata, 2024. "A Model for Evaluating Inequalities in Sustainability," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 879-898, December.
    13. Herwig Immervoll & Horacio Levy & Christine Lietz & Daniela Mantovani & Cathal O’Donoghue & Holly Sutherland & Gerlinde Verbist, 2006. "Household Incomes and Redistribution in the European Union: Quantifying the Equalizing Properties of Taxes and Benefits," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Dimitri B. Papadimitriou (ed.), The Distributional Effects of Government Spending and Taxation, chapter 5, pages 135-165, Palgrave Macmillan.
    14. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia & Oscar Volij, 2011. "An Axiomatic Characterization Of The Theil Inequality Order," Working Papers 1103, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    15. Guido Erreygers & Roselinde Kessels, 2017. "Socioeconomic Status and Health: A New Approach to the Measurement of Bivariate Inequality," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-23, June.
    16. Darren Butterworth & Phil Holmes, 2005. "The Hedging Effectiveness of U.K. Stock Index Futures Contracts Using an Extended Mean Gini Approach: Evidence for the FTSE 100 and FTSE Mid250 Contracts," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 9(3-4), pages 131-160, September.
    17. Johannes König & Carsten Schröder, 2018. "Inequality-minimization with a given public budget," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(4), pages 607-629, December.
    18. Zvetan Ignatov & Vilimir Yordanov, 2025. "On Iterated Lorenz Curves With Applications," Yearbook of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Sofia University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski - Bulgaria, vol. 24(1), pages 71-118, August.
    19. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2000. "Statistical Inference for Stochastic Dominance and for the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1435-1464, November.
    20. Guido Erreygers & Roselinde Kessels & Linkun Chen & Philip Clarke, 2016. "Decomposing Socioeconomic Inequality of Health," EcoMod2016 9574, EcoMod.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:21:y:2000:i:3:p:329-347. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.