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Inequality in Burkina Faso—to what extent do household, community and regional factors matter?
Author(s) -
Gräb Johannes,
Grimm Michael
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-985x.2010.00686.x
Subject(s) - inequality , demographic economics , economics , psychological intervention , economic inequality , geography , spatial inequality , development economics , multilevel model , economic geography , mathematical analysis , mathematics , machine learning , computer science , psychology , psychiatry
Summary. Empirical evidence suggests that regional disparities in income are often very wide, that these disparities do not necessarily disappear as economies grow and that these disparities are themselves a major driver of growth. We use a novel approach based on multilevel modelling to decompose the sources of inequality in household incomes in Burkina Faso. We show that differences in income across space are explained not only by the spatial concentration of households with favourable characteristics but to a large extent also by disparities in community endowments. Climatic differences across regions do matter, also, but to a much smaller extent. On the basis of the findings, it would be worth assessing the potential effects of policies which build and enhance infrastructure that connects communities complemented by interventions targeted to specific villages that particularly lag behind.