 Colonial origin, ethnicity and intergenerational mobility in AfricaPatricia Funjika and Yoseph Getachew World Development, 2022, vol. 153, issue C Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between an individual’s human capital and that of their parents’ ethnic group in former British and French colonies in Africa. Using pooled cross-sectional data from eight African countries, four former French colonies (Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Madagascar, Niger) and four former British colonies (Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda), we find large effects of parental ethnicity on individuals’ human capital. Our results show that colonial origin may be important in understanding intergenerational mobility in African countries via its effect on ethnic relations. Ethnic capital has a persistent effect. This effect, which could be attributed to differences in administration styles adopted during the colonial period, is higher in former British than former French colonies. Birth cohort regression analysis further shows that the ethnic effect has declined across cohorts in former British colonies while remaining comparatively static in former French colonies. Our results are robust to the use of different estimation techniques. Keywords: Human capital; Intergenerational mobility; Colonial origin; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:153:y:2022:i:c:s0305750x22000316 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105841 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
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