Ethnic Inequality

Alberto F. Alesina, Stelios Michalopoulos, Elias Papaioannou

NBER Working Paper No. 18512
Issued in November 2012, Revised in July 2013
NBER Program(s):Development Economics, Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Political Economy

This study explores the consequences and origins of between-ethnicity economic inequality both across and within countries. First, combining satellite images of nighttime luminosity with the historical homelands of ethnolinguistic groups we construct measures of ethnic inequality for a large sample of countries and show that the latter is strongly inversely related to comparative development. Second, differences in geographic endowments across ethnic homelands explain a sizable portion of ethnic inequality contributing to its persistence over time. Third, exploiting across-district within-African countries variation using individual-level data on ethnic identification and well-being from the Afrobarometer Surveys we find that between ethnic-group inequality is systematically linked to regional under-development. In this sample we also explore the channels linking ethnic inequality to (under) development, finding that ethnic inequality maps to political inequality, heightened perceptions of discrimination and undersupply of public goods.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w18512

Published: Alberto Alesina & Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou, 2016. "Ethnic Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(2), pages 000 - 000. citation courtesy of