• DOI:10.1561/100.00015005
• Corpus ID: 156337036

Ethnic Favoritism in Education in Kenya

@article{Kramon2016EthnicFI,
  title={Ethnic Favoritism in Education in Kenya},
  author={Eric Kramon and Daniel N. Posner},
  journal={Quarterly Journal of Political Science},
  year={2016},
  volume={11},
  pages={1-58}
}

• Eric Kramon, Daniel N. Posner
• Published 17 April 2016
• Sociology
• Quarterly Journal of Political Science

Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2016, 11: 1–58 Ethnic Favoritism in Education in Kenya Eric Kramon 1 and Daniel N. Posner 2∗ 1 Department of Political Science, George Washington University, 2115 G St. NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA; [e-mail] 2 Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, 4289 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1472, USA; [e-mail] ABSTRACT We test the claim that African leaders favor members of their own ethnic groups by studying ethnic favoritism in the education sector in Kenya. We use data on the educational attainment of more than fifty thousand Kenyans dating back to the colonial era, as well as information about the ethnic identities of Kenyan presidents, cabinet members, and high- level education bureaucrats since the 1960s. Consistent with previous work, we find that having a coethnic as president during one’s school-age years is associated with an increase in the schooling that children acquire. In contrast to recent studies, we find that multiparty political competition has no impact on the degree of ethnic favoritism in the educa- tion sector. We also go beyond prior work in three ways. First, we show that coethnics of the minister of education also acquire more schooling than children from other ethnic groups — evidence that ministerial appointments come with The authors thank members of the Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) and seminar participants at Dartmouth, Georgetown, MIT, NBER, Oxford, Penn, Princeton, Rochester, Stanford, Virginia, Columbia, Hebrew University, the Supplementary Material available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00015005_supp MS submitted on 8 January 2015; final version received 15 September 2015 ISSN 1554-0626; DOI 10.1561/100.00015005 © 2016 E. Kramon and D. N. Posner