Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14332
Authors: Joseph Flavian Gomes
Abstract: This paper shows that children of mothers who are ethnically more distant from theirneighbours have worse health outcomes. I combine individual-level micro data from DHSsurveys for 14 sub-Saharan African countries with a novel high-resolution dataset on thespatial distribution of ethnic groups at the 1 km x 1 km level. I measure ethnic distance usinglinguistic distance and construct the spatial distribution of ethnic groups using an iterativeproportional fitting algorithm. Using a time-varying ethnicity fixed effects framework tocurb unobserved heterogeneity across ethnic groups, I show that children whose mothersare linguistically more distant from their neighbours face higher mortality rates and areshorter in stature. The pernicious effects of linguistic distance are more pronounced in areaswhere malaria is endemic. I argue that higher linguistic distance impedes the transmissionof information. Consistent with this interpretation, mothers who are linguistically moredistant from their neighbours are less likely to receive health-related information. Linguisticdistances driven by splits that occurred thousands of years ago are more relevant than morerecent splits.
Keywords: ethnic distance; ethnic diversity; ethnic networks; child mortality; African development
JEL Codes: I14; O10; O15; Z10; Z13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Maternal linguistic distance (J12) | Child mortality (J13) |
| Maternal linguistic distance (J12) | Child height (J13) |
| Maternal linguistic distance (J12) | Health-related information access (I10) |