Does the Leader’s Ethnicity Matter? Ethnic Favoritism, Education and Health in Sub-saharan Africa
Abstract: This paper provides a new assessment of ethnic favoritism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from 18 African countries, we study how primary education and infant mortality of ethnic groups were affected by changes in the ethnicity of the countries’ leaders during the last fifty years. Our results indicate that the effects of ethnic favoritism are large and widespread, thus providing support for ethnicity-based explanations of Africa’s underdevelopment. We also find that ethnic favoritism is more prevalent in countries where governments have greater fiscal resources and is less prevalent in countries with one dominant religion. In contrast, countries whose ethnic groups speak structurally unrelated languages or live in more segregated areas do not display higher levels of ethnic favoritism.
