IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/ecdecc/doi10.1086-669257.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Catholics versus Protestants: On the Benefit Incidence of Faith-Based Foreign Aid

Author

Listed:
  • Niklas Bengtsson

Abstract

We estimate the impact of a village-level assistance program run by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania on schooling and literacy. These programs are partly funded by foreign aid from US and Scandinavian donors. Difference-in-difference estimates suggest that the program increased literacy by 15-20 percentage points and educational attainment by 10-15 percentage points, but only among Protestant children. Catholic children living in the same targeted villages were unaffected. Supplementary evidence implies that these results cannot be explained by observable differences at baseline, nor are Catholic households less inclined to accept development assistance in general. The combined results support the concern that faith organizations might overstate their ability to aid households of different faith.

Suggested Citation

  • Niklas Bengtsson, 2013. "Catholics versus Protestants: On the Benefit Incidence of Faith-Based Foreign Aid," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(3), pages 479-502.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/669257
    DOI: 10.1086/669257
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/669257
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/669257
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/669257?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martina Björkman & Jakob Svensson, 2009. "Power to the People: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on Community-Based Monitoring in Uganda," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(2), pages 735-769.
    2. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Rukmini Banerji & Esther Duflo & Rachel Glennerster & Stuti Khemani, 2010. "Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 1-30, February.
    3. Rachel M. McCleary & Robert J. Barro, 2006. "Religion and Economy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 49-72, Spring.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    5. Hungerman, Daniel M., 2005. "Are church and state substitutes? Evidence from the 1996 welfare reform," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2245-2267, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Congdon Fors, Heather & Isaksson, Ann-Sofie & Lindskog, Annika, 2024. "Changing local customs: The long run impacts of Christian missions on female genital cutting in Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    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.
    3. Basedau, Matthias & Gobien, Simone & Prediger, Sebastian, 2017. "The Ambivalent Role of Religion for Sustainable Development: A Review of the Empirical Evidence," GIGA Working Papers 297, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    4. Matthias Basedau & Simone Gobien & Sebastian Prediger, 2018. "The Multidimensional Effects Of Religion On Socioeconomic Development: A Review Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 1106-1133, September.
    5. Faraz Usmani & Marc Jeuland & Subhrendu Pattanayak, 2018. "NGOs and the effectiveness of interventions," WIDER Working Paper Series 59, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Faraz Usmani & Marc Jeuland & Subhrendu K. Pattanayak, 2024. "NGOs and the Effectiveness of Interventions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1690-1708, November.

    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. Chicoine, Luke & Guzman, Juan Carlos, 2017. "Increasing Rural Health Clinic Utilization with SMS Updates: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 419-430.
    2. Hasan, Iftekhar & Manfredonia, Stefano & Noth, Felix, 2020. "Cultural resilience and economic recovery: Evidence from Hurricane Katrina," IWH Discussion Papers 16/2020, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    3. Madajewicz, Malgosia & Tompsett, Anna & Habib, Md. Ahasan, 2021. "How does delegating decisions to communities affect the provision and use of a public service? Evidence from a field experiment in Bangladesh," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    4. Asim, Minahil & Dee, Thomas S., 2022. "Mobile Phones, Civic Engagement, and School Performance in Pakistan," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    5. Bentzen, Jeanet & Sperling, Lena, 2020. "God Politics," CEPR Discussion Papers 14380, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Tahir Andrabi & Jishnu Das & Asim Ijaz Khwaja, 2017. "Report Cards: The Impact of Providing School and Child Test Scores on Educational Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(6), pages 1535-1563, June.
    7. Song, Yang, 2019. "Sorting, school performance and quality: Evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 238-261.
    8. Gruber, Jonathan & Hungerman, Daniel M., 2007. "Faith-based charity and crowd-out during the great depression," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(5-6), pages 1043-1069, June.
    9. Fredriksson, Anders, 2017. "Location-allocation of public services – Citizen access, transparency and measurement. A method and evidence from Brazil and Sweden," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-12.
    10. Jiang, Shuguang & Wei, Qian & Zhao, Lei, 2024. "Synergizing anti-corruption strategies: Group monitoring and endogenous crackdown – An experimental investigation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    11. Darin Christensen & Oeindrila Dube & Johannes Haushofer & Bilal Siddiqi & Maarten Voors, 2021. "Building Resilient Health Systems: Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone and The 2014 Ebola Outbreak," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(2), pages 1145-1198.
    12. Chikwalila, Eric & Willinger, Marc & Farolfi, Stefano & Mungatana, Eric & Jourdain, Damien, 2023. "The impact of a scholarship programme on social capital formation among university students: An economic experiment at the University of Pretoria, South Africa," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 18(01), April.
    13. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iatqiagpl is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Kis-Katos, Krisztina & Sjahrir, Bambang Suharnoko, 2017. "The impact of fiscal and political decentralization on local public investment in Indonesia," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 344-365.
    15. Ardanaz, Martin & Otálvaro-Ramírez, Susana & Scartascini, Carlos, 2023. "Does information about citizen participation initiatives increase political trust?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    16. Elgin, Ceyhun & Goksel, Turkmen & Gurdal, Mehmet Y. & Orman, Cuneyt, 2013. "Religion, income inequality, and the size of the government," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 225-234.
    17. World Bank Group, 2014. "Strategic Framework for Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in World Bank Group Operations," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 21113, August.
    18. Platteau, Jean-Philippe & Somville, Vincent & Wahhaj, Zaki, 2014. "Elite capture through information distortion: A theoretical essay," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 250-263.
    19. Berry, James & Mehta, Saurabh & Mukherjee, Priya & Ruebeck, Hannah & Shastry, Gauri Kartini, 2021. "Crowd-out in school-based health interventions: Evidence from India’s midday meals program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    20. Francesco Avvisati & Marc Gurgand & Nina Guyon & Eric Maurin, 2014. "Getting Parents Involved: A Field Experiment in Deprived Schools," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(1), pages 57-83.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/669257. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/EDCC .

    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.