Ethno-Regional Favoritism and the Political Economy of School Test Scores

Philip Verwimp

No 322, HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network

Abstract: The northern provinces of Burundi have suffered from an inferior education system since independence. This paper shows that the current, northern-led regime has chosen a drastic way to reverse that subordination. The national test (Concours National) at the end of primary school is at the heart of the matter. Using the universe of individual test score data which can be used to construct a school-level panel and applying difference- in-differences analysis, the paper shows strong improvements in test scores in northern versus southern schools since the ruling party won an absolute majority in the 2010 elections. Immediately after these elections, schools situated in very poor, rural areas in the north scored as high as schools in non-poor areas of the capital. The paper finds that increased success rates, improved mean test scores and decreased standard deviations are explained by the percent of votes at the municipality level obtained by the ruling party in the 2010 parliamentary elections. Controlling for school budget and cohort size variables does not change the results. The latter are interpreted in the political economy of education reform in Burundi and considered as a case of ethno-regional favoritism in Africa.

Keywords: ethno-regional favoritism; school test scores; elections; Burundi (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2020-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hicn.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/HiCN-WP-322.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Ethno-regional favoritism and the political economy of school test scores (2023)
Working Paper: Ethno-Regional Favoritism and the Political Economy of School Test Scores (2019)
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:hic:wpaper:322

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tilman Brück () and () and () and ().