Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Gomes, Joseph
Title: The health costs of ethnic distance: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
Abstract: We show that ethnic distances can explain the ethnic inequalities in child mortality rates in Africa. Using individual level micro data from DHS surveys for fourteen Sub-Saharan African countries combined with a novel high resolution dataset on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups we show that children whose mothers have a higher linguistic distance from their neighbours have a higher probability of dying. Fractionalization reduces the probability of child death. We argue that fractionalization reflects a higher stock of knowledge and information leading to better health outcomes. Knowledge does not flow smoothly to linguistically distant groups. Linguistically distant mothers also have a lower probability of knowing about the oral rehydration product (ORS) for treating children with diarrhoea.

Creation-Date: 20141017
Number: 2014-33
Publication-Status: published
File-URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/iser/2014-33.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2014-33