No abstract

This paper examines for the first time inequality of opportunity for income in Africa, by analyzing large-sample surveys, all providing information on individuals' parental background, in five comparable Sub-Saharan countries: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar and Uganda. We compute inequality of opportunity indexes in keeping with the main proposals in the literature, and propose a decomposition of between-country differences that distinguishes the respective impacts of intergenerational mobility between social origins and positions, of the distribution of education and occupations, and of the earnings structure. Among our five countries, Ghana in 1988 has by far the lowest income inequality between individuals of different social origins, while Madagascar in 1993 displays the highest inequality of opportunity from the same point of view. Ghana in 1998, Ivory Coast in 1985-88, Guinea in 1994 and Uganda in 1992 stand in-between and can not be ranked without ambiguity. Inequality of opportunity for income seems to correlate with overall income inequality more than with national average income. Decompositions reveal that the two former British colonies (Ghana and Uganda) share a much higher intergenerational educational and occupational mobility than the three former French colonies. Further, Ghana distinguishes itself from the four other countries, because of the combination of widespread secondary schooling, low returns to education and low income dualism against agriculture. Nevertheless, it displays marked regional inequality insofar as being born in the Northern part of this country produces a significant restriction of income opportunities.

In this article, we examine whether migration experience provides an opportunity for Malian migrants to learn and adopt new political values and norms, and whether this translates into different attitudes towards domestic politics and institutions. We use a multi-sited exit-poll survey which was conducted during the Malian 2013 presidential election in Mali, France, and Côte d'Ivoire to investigate whether Malian migrants have different perceptions and political behavior than their non-migrant counterparts. By distinguishing between Malian migrants living in France and Côte d'Ivoire, we provide evidence that not only migrants have different perceptions of Malian democratic institutions than their non-migrant counterparts, but also that the institutional context of the host country matters for the adoption of political norms.

No abstract

L'objet de ce travail est d'étudier l'évolution de la pauvreté urbaine en Côte d'Ivoire depuis les années 1980. On s'attache à rendre compte de plusieurs dimensions de la pauvreté, à vérifier, par des techniques de la dominance, la robustesse des tendances observées et à estimer de manière économétrique les déterminants des différentes formes de pauvreté. On montre que la pauvreté de conditions d'existence peut adopter une dynamique différente de celle de la pauvreté monétaire. Sans équivoque, la pauvreté monétaire, après avoir véritablement explosé entre 1985 et 1993, a sensiblement augmenté dans les centres urbains ivoiriens malgré le retour de la croissance. Une approche examinant les conditions d'existence et les capacités des ménages montre, sur la période de croissance, une tendance inverse.

Using a 2006 household survey in Mali, we compare current poverty rates and inequality levels with counterfactual ones in the absence of migration and remittances. With proper hypotheses on migrants and a selection model, we are able to impute a counterfactual income for households currently receiving remittances. We show that remittances reduce poverty rates by 5% to 11% and the Gini coefficient by about 5%. Households in the bottom quintiles are more dependent on remittances, which are less substitutable by additional workforce.

The paper addresses the issue of the accuracy of standard-of-living measurements using household survey data. First, it highlights the fact that lighter data collection processes in some developing countries have added to measurement errors in consumption and income aggregates measurement errors. The paper reasserts the need to apply reference guidelines to the measurement of household consumption in order to compute comparable distribution indicators across countries and over time. Second, it contends that it is hard to analyze inequality solely from consumption patterns without taking income and savings into account. Two solutions are proposed for the correction of income measurement errors: by using savings declarations and by implementing a multiple imputation procedure. The results are based on a careful analysis of the EPM93 survey of Madagascar whose design is quite close to the LSMS household surveys, and the ENV98 survey of C�te d'Ivoire representative of surveys conducted nowadays in most Sub-Saharan African countries. Copyright 2010 The Authors. Review of Income and Wealth 2010 International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.

International audienceThis paper explores the impact of Malian migrants' Home Town Associations (HTAs) located in France on the provision of local public goods in Mali. To this end, we compute an original dataset on all the HTAs that have been created by Malian migrants in France since 1981 and geo-localize their interventions on the Malian territory. Thanks to four waves of Malian census, we also build a panel dataset on the provision of a range of public goods in all Malian villages over the 1976-2009 period.These two sources of data allow us to implement a difference-in-differences strategy, and to comparevillages with and without an HTA, before and after HTAs developed their activity in Mali. We find that Malian HTAs have significantly contributed to improve the provision of schools, health centersand water amenities over the 1987-2009 period. When looking at the timing of the treatment, we observe that the difference between treated and control villages in terms of water amenities is mainlydriven by the second period of observation (1998-2009), while schools and health centers exhibit significant differences during the whole period.Nous analysons l’impact des associations de migrants (AM) de Maliens vivant en France sur la disponibilité en biens publics au Mali. Pour ce faire, nous avons constitué une base originale dedonnées qui recense l’ensemble des AM maliennes enregistrées au Journal Officiel français depuis1981 et qui géo-référence leurs lieux d’intervention. Cette base est couplée avec quatre recensementsexhaustifs qui permettent de connaître la disponibilité en biens publics de chaque village malien de 1976 à 2009. En mettant en oeuvre une estimation en double différences, nous montrons que les AM maliennes ont significativement contribué à l’augmentation du nombre d’écoles, de centres de santé et d’adduction d’eau sur la période 1987-2009. Plus précisément, on observe que la différence entre le groupe de villages traités et le groupe de contrôle concernant l’adduction en eau est dû à des investissements menés durant la seconde période (1998-2009) tandis que les financements des AMconcernant les écoles et les centres de santé ont eu lieu tout au long de la période 1987-2009