Linguistic Fractionalization and Health Information in Sub-Saharan Africa

Joseph Gomes

The World Bank Economic Review, 2020, vol. 34, issue Supplement_1, S20-S25

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between linguistic diversity and the stock of health information in society. Information is measured using individual-level knowledge about the oral rehydration product for treating children with diarrhea. Exploiting an individual woman-level dataset from the Demographic and Health Surveys for 14 sub-Saharan African countries combined with a novel high-resolution dataset on the spatial distribution of linguistic groups at a 1 km × 1 km level, this study shows that linguistic diversity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the stock of information in society.

Keywords: linguistic diversity; fractionalization; linguistic distance; health information; child health; African development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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