IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jecgeo/v20y2020i1p93-122..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Six decades after independence: the enduring influence of missionary activities on regional wealth inequalities in Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Godfred O Boateng
  • Dozie Okoye
  • Jonathan Amoyaw
  • Isaac Luginaah

Abstract

What forces drive regional economic divergence? This study identifies colonial-era missions as an institutional force in shaping economic relations in Ghana. We conceptualize Christian missions as an institution, in its solid form, as the educational infrastructure and trade networks developed, and in its formal form, as advancing new rules that governed cultural and trade development. We use survey data, a map of mission stations, data on colonial-era urbanization and calculations of geographic endowments in each region of the country to examine the impacts of missionary activities on wealth, schooling and population clustering, and how these are reflected in wealth differences across regions of Ghana today. Results show that regional disparities in household wealth are large and significantly associated with intensity of colonial missionary activities, even after accounting for other important structural factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Godfred O Boateng & Dozie Okoye & Jonathan Amoyaw & Isaac Luginaah, 2020. "Six decades after independence: the enduring influence of missionary activities on regional wealth inequalities in Ghana," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 93-122.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:20:y:2020:i:1:p:93-122.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lby067
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Remi Jedwab & Felix Meier zu Selhausen & Alexander Moradi, 2022. "The economics of missionary expansion: evidence from Africa and implications for development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 149-192, June.
    2. Congdon Fors, Heather & Isaksson, Ann-Sofie & Annika, Lindskog, 2023. "Changing local customs: Long-run impacts of the earliest campaigns against female genital cutting," Working Papers in Economics 831, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ghana; missionary activity; regional inequality; wealth; population clusters; spatial disparities; agglomeration; north–south divide;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J - Labor and Demographic Economics
    • F - International Economics

    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:oup:jecgeo:v:20:y:2020:i:1:p:93-122.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/joeg .

    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.