The Health Costs of Ethnic Distance: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Joseph Gomes

No 04/2017, NCID Working Papers from Navarra Center for International Development, University of Navarra

Abstract: We show that ethnic distances lead to worse child health outcomes by impeding access to health-related information. We combine individual level micro data from DHS surveys for fourteen sub-Saharan African countries, with a high-resolution dataset on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups at the 1 × 1 sq. km level constructed using an Iterative Proportional Fitting algorithm. We show that children whose mothers are linguistically more distant to their neighbours face higher mortality rates and are shorter in size. Linguistically distant mothers are also less likely to know about the oral rehydration product for treating children with diarrhoea.

Keywords: ethnic distance; linguistic distance; linguistic diversity; ethnic inequality; child mortality; African development; health inequalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 O10 O15 Z10 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-evo and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://ncid.unav.edu/sites/default/files/documentos/working-papers/WP042017.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The health costs of ethnic distance: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa (2020)
Working Paper: The Health Costs of Ethnic Distance: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (2020)
Working Paper: The Health Costs of Ethnic Distance: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (2020)
Working Paper: The health costs of ethnic distance: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nva:unnvaa:wp04-2017

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