Group inequality and the severity of civil conflict

John D. Huber () and Laura Mayoral
Additional contact information
John D. Huber: Columbia University

Journal of Economic Growth, 2019, vol. 24, issue 1, No 1, 41 pages

Abstract: Abstract Civil conflicts, which have been much more prevalent than inter-state conflicts over the last fifty years, vary enormously in their intensity, with some causing millions of deaths and some far fewer. The central goal of this paper is to test an argument from previous theoretical research that high inequality within an ethnic group can make inter-ethnic conflict more violent because such inequality decreases the opportunity cost to poor group members of fighting, and also decreases the opportunity cost to rich group members of funding the conflict. To test this argument, we create a new data set that uses individual-level surveys to measure inequality within ethnic groups. The analysis using these data provide strong evidence for the importance of within-group inequality, and thus underscores the value of focusing on the capacity of groups to fight if one wishes to limit the destruction of civil conflicts.

Keywords: Ethnicity; Within-group inequality; Civil conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D74 J15 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10887-019-09162-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jecgro:v:24:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10887-019-09162-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10887/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10887-019-09162-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Growth is currently edited by Oded Galor

More articles in Journal of Economic Growth from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().