Measuring Ethnic Stratification and its Effect on Trust in Africa

Roland Hodler; Sorawoot Srisuma; Alberto Vesperoni; Noemie Zurlinden

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102475

Measuring Ethnic Stratification and its Effect on Trust in Africa

Roland Hodler, Sorawoot Srisuma, Alberto Vesperoni, Noemie Zurlinden

Political Economy

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10 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

We conjecture that mistrust and social conflict in a society may depend on ethnic stratification, i.e., the extent to which the hierarchy in socio-economic positions across individuals follows ethnolinguistic lines. We define and axiomatically characterize an index of ethnic stratification that generalizes the idea of between-group inequality to situations where data on economic and ethnolinguistic distances between pairs of individuals is available. We use Afrobarometer survey data to measure ethnic stratification at the level of towns and villages in 26 ethnically diverse African countries. We find that ethnic stratification is negatively related to trust in relatives, neighbors and other acquaintances, and positively related to nearby conflicts. These findings shed new light on the debate about the merits of conflict and contact theory.

Original language	English
Article number	102475
Number of pages	21
Journal	JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
Volume	146
Issue number	0
Early online date	21 Apr 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102475
Publication status	Published - Sept 2020

Keywords

Between-group inequality
Ethnic diversity
Measurement
Social conflict
Trust

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102475

Measuring Ethnic Stratification and_HODLER_Acc20Mar2020Epub21Apr2020_GREEN AAM(CC BY NC ND)Accepted author manuscript, 2.72 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

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AU - Vesperoni, Alberto

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Measuring Ethnic Stratification and its Effect on Trust in Africa

Abstract

Keywords

UN SDGs

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