全球智库信息集成服务系统(G2TT): DP16218 Measuring historical income inequality in Africa: What can we learn from social tables?

G2TT

来源类型	Discussion paper
规范类型	论文
来源ID	DP16218
	DP16218 Measuring historical income inequality in Africa: What can we learn from social tables?
	Ellen Hillbom; Jutta Bolt; Michiel De Haas; Federico Tadei
发表日期	2021-06-03
出版年	2021
语种	英语
摘要	Limited knowledge of African inequality trajectories hampers our understanding of the drivers of heterogeneous inequality outcomes in Africa today, and leads to a major omission in debates about global inequality. In recent years, African economic history has advanced towards the reconstruction of full income distributions of African economies using ‘social tables’. In this paper, we take stock of the social table literature covering the cases of Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Senegal, and Uganda, 1910s to 1960s. Our contribution is twofold. First, we investigate commensurability and pursue methodological harmonisation. Second, we propose a new analytical framework to study income inequality in colonial Africa, revolving around export-oriented commercialisation and colonialism. We apply this framework to the six cases. Tracing country-level inequality trends and levels using three different inequality metrics, we find that i) inequality increased as commercialisation progressed and ii) relative levels of inequality differed substantially and were linked to European settlers and colonial institutions. Using inequality decompositions by sector and race, we further refine these insights. We find that capital-intensive commodities were associated with larger inequality in the self-employed sector and that the presence of European settlers and a large colonial administration increased the salience of race as a major fault line.
主题	Economic History
关键词	Inequality Social tables Colonial africa
URL	https://cepr.org/publications/dp16218
来源智库	Centre for Economic Policy Research (United Kingdom)
资源类型	智库出版物
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/545188
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Ellen Hillbom,Jutta Bolt,Michiel De Haas,et al. DP16218 Measuring historical income inequality in Africa: What can we learn from social tables?. 2021.